


grit

by magliarosa



Category: Cycling RPF
Genre: Angst, First Love, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Reminiscing, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:01:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 29,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28862976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magliarosa/pseuds/magliarosa
Summary: "I was on my limit," Mathieu throws his hands up. "I've never been on the limit like that before."A hand on his shoulder. The voice is warm and deep."Things change, Mathieu."
Relationships: Wout van Aert/Mathieu van der Poel
Comments: 22
Kudos: 28





	1. the starting line

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm, should I really be taking on another huge project like this, before finishing "debt"? No. Am I going to? Yes. 
> 
> A note: all of the stuff about Mathieu and Wout as kids is made up (as is most of everything in this fic lol.) Once we get into their time as young adults (around 2012), then I'll add more detailed notes.

Namur, Belgium. December 20th, 2020.

He doesn't care that the camera is right there. Crouched on the shoulder of one of the many strangers whose job it is to document his exploits, he feels the lens' mechanical gaze on him. Elbows draped over knees, head hanging low in between them, he sits on edge of the red-carpeted media tent platform, filthy with mud and sand and grit. He wears it well, he always does, always has, and always will.

A small group of men surround him: the cameraman and his assistant, a soigneur from his team, a race official, standing guard for COVID reasons. It's as much privacy as he's going to get, but he chose this life, this life pinned under the ever-present gaze of other people.

He catches his breath, in through the nose, one, two, three, out through the mouth, tick tick tick goes the heartbeat in his ears, in through the nose, one, two, three, out through the mouth... Eyes sunken, he lacks both the energy and the will to wipe the grime off his face, and in a way, he feels unworthy of doing so. It's a familiar emotion, self-loathing - a here-and-there occupant in the guest house of his long-extended adolescence. Words churn in his stomach, purse his lips into a thin line. _This win should have been easy for you. You should have walked away with this. But you didn't._ _You struggled. You were weak. You stupid fuck._

Footsteps, the kind of shuffling made by cycling cleats in the sand. He doesn't look up from his own.

"Mathieu." The voice is warm and deep. He'd recognize it anywhere. "Good race. Congrats."

"Yeah." Mathieu's not interested in talking.

A chuckle. "You really had me strung out there at the end."

Cold silence under slate gray sky. Evening creeps in. _Go away_.

"You okay?" A hand on his shoulder, its warmth familiar from some time long, long ago. The cameras are definitely rolling now, eager to catch two arch-rivals in a moment of sportsmanlike camaraderie. The deep voice again, annoyed, not directed towards him. "Do you mind?"

Mathieu listens to the sounds of the staff leaving, admits to himself that he's grateful that they're gone. The hand on his shoulder leaves it. He refuses to look at the man hovering over him, crouching down, taking a seat at his side. Their close proximity bristles the hair on the back of his neck, puts tension in his shoulders. Total resistance. _Go away. Jesus._

"Mathieu."

"What?" Mathieu snaps.

"Are you alright?" Concern.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" Mathieu can't keep the bite out of his tone.

"No." He says it firmly, a way of communicating to Mathieu that he's not going anywhere. Mathieu sighs.

"Why so pissed?" Lighthearted now. "It was a hard race, but you still won."

"Fuck this race," Mathieu mutters.

"Come on, was it really that bad?" The casualness of the statement is what does it. The frustration bubbles to fruition. Mathieu's never been the type of person to hold things in forever. He's a shook up bottle of champagne, always one twist of the wrist away from frothing over with a loud _pop_.

"I was on my fucking limit," Mathieu throws his hands up. "I've never been on the limit like that before."

"Are you telling me you're finally becoming mortal?" Mathieu can hear the smile in the words. He hates it.

"I'm not telling you shit."

The hand on his shoulder again. He shrugs it off. A weary sigh. Annoyance.

"Things change, Mathieu."

"No they don't," Mathieu snaps. "Not for me."

"Not for you _yet_."

When was the last time they talked? Really talked? Mathieu can't remember. Their companionship for years has been limited to brief, terse exchanges before and after races. Polite, restrained, the language of life-long rivals, detached colleagues, coworkers who pretend to like each other in the break room. They pat each other on the back for the cameras, a lesson in sportsmanship for good Dutch and Belgian boys watching on television.

"We're getting older."

Mathieu frowns, still refusing to meet the gaze of his companion. "Don't get fucking sentimental on me." 

A laugh, deep and rich. "Sentimental? Hey, I'm Wout van Aert, from Herentals." The words come out in an accent Wout van Aert from Herentals had smothered out years ago. Mathieu's chest seizes up at the sound. Instantly, he's twelve again, instantly he's on the starting line in his first ever pair of white bibs, tight-lipped and arrogant. Remembering shirks off some of the weight of his important life's obligations. Startled by the visceral nature of his flashback, he finally looks up, meets the warm gaze of the man beside him, indulges him, if only for the sake of banter.

"Hey, Wout van Aert from Herentals," Mathieu finishes, just as he did half a lifetime ago, resisting the smile that forms in the corner of his mouth. "What the fuck kind of name is that?"

Wout chuckles, stands up, extends his hand out to Mathieu.

"Catch a ride back with me?"

Mathieu shouldn't, he knows he shouldn't. The separation, the distance has worked well for them all this time, why backtrack now?

"Isn't that out of the way for you?" he scowls.

Wout's gaze is intense.

"I have time."

Mathieu, still frowning, stands up, refusing Wout's assistance. A familiar ache, an ache he buried deep inside of himself years and years ago lurks in the pit of his stomach, and, even though he should heed it as a warning, an explicit statement of _do not fucking do this you fucking_ _moron,_ he swallows hard and adds ice to his stare. He knows they're on a knife's edge, and he's walking a fine line between safety and getting cut. Something, something Mathieu doesn't want to dwell on or acknowledge, puts a cautious nod in his head. He calls it an impulse, which is the only label he can live with.

"Fine," he says, hating himself for saying it.


	2. clipping in

_He's a country boy, all thick accent and languid, easy-going disposition._

_It's a bright, sunny day. Yesterday it rained, and the course, taped off with spokes and neon-colored plastic, is chunky with mud. Their cleats are already packed with it courtesy of the journey from the parking lot as they wait for the start. Fresh faced children, cheeks pink in the Belgian autumn air, no older than twelve, they chatter in awkward, changing voices._

_It takes a while to get them sorted by name, lined up behind a white demarcation sloppily painted on pavement. The boy is new to this particular set of racing meets, but he isn't nervous - he's prepared behind the scenes in private lessons with a decent coach from a known cycling family. Weekends spent around Herentals in muddy fields and backwater trails practicing running mounts and dismounts and attack positions and shouldering until it's all second nature, like playing a song from memory. He trusts his memory._ _A somewhat shy boy, (but not painfully so) he's more uptight about making a good first impression with the other riders in the pack than he is about his first meet._

_Five minutes until race time. Once an official shuffles him where he gets where he needs to be, he figures he should introduce himself. Situated at the very end of the front row, he looks to the boy next to him whose face is very serious, concealed behind too-big cycling glasses. He has the affectation of someone who does not want to be talked to. Still, the country boy's been taught his manners well. He extends a hand._

_"I'm Wout van Aert, from Herentals."_

_The other boy ignores him, his elbows draped over his handlebars, a blue plastic digital watch on his wrist. Wout van Aert from Herentals repeats himself, assuming the other boy didn't hear him. He's interrupted._

_"I heard you, Wout van Aert from Herentals." A scoff. "What the fuck kind of name is that?"_

_Wout laughs the kind of laugh one laughs when one is caught completely off-guard. The familiarity of the swearing seems out of place, but is strangely reassuring rather than insulting. We're on swearing terms, then, Wout notes. Better be casual.  
_

_"Oh? What's your name, then?"_

_"Mathieu," Mathieu answers tersely. Wout extends the hand again, and Mathieu gives it a quick, firm shake. "You're new," he notes._

_"Yeah," Wout admits. "Been training for a while, though."_

_"You know it doesn't mean anything that we're both up in the front row, right? They just do the line up alphabetically, reverse this time. Don't get any ideas."_

_Wout doesn't know what to say to something so presumptuous. He simply shrugs._

_"Who's your coach?" Mathieu asks, sizing him up while doing it._

_"Roger De Bie. You?" Wout tries not to sound too proud._

_A little smirk twinges at the corner of pursed lips. "Adrie van der Poel."_

_"Bullshit," Wout accuses, laughing, thinking it's a joke. Mathieu scowls._

_"I'm serious. Look, he's right over there." A jerk of the thumb._

_Wout looks, and there, standing near the pits, is, in fact ex-professional cyclist Adrie van der Poel, chatting away with a bike mechanic, the sun casting shadows across his gray-blond hair and sunken eyes. Wout attempts to keep his jaw from dropping, but the surprise is evident in his dilated pupils._

_"You want an autograph?" Mathieu holds out his hand, "Five euros."_

_"I've got one, thanks," Wout replies, still agog but trying to hide it beneath a facade of cool. "I met him once after a race when I was six."_

_"He signs a lot of shit." Implied: You're not special. "You won't believe how much cash I've made off it. Enough to buy a Nintendo DS."_

_"How the hell'd you get Adrie van der Poel to coach you? Does he, like, do stuff like that?"_

_"Not really. He's my dad."_

_"Jesus Christ," Wout mutters, suddenly feeling much less confident in the legs resting against bicycle top tube. "That's, uh, pretty cool."_

_Mathieu shrugs. "It's ok."_

_A whistle blows. The boys stand at attention, clip in in unison._

_"Alright," barks the race organizer in a fluorescent vest. "Any time in the next thirty seconds."_

_They lean into their bikes, hearts reaming in their chests, the impending doom of an all-out sprint hangs over them. A smirk from Mathieu._

_"See ya."_

_The bell rings. By the time Wout gets his second cleat clipped in, Mathieu's already far ahead of him._

_He never looks back. He doesn't need to._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't actually know who Wout's coach was as a teenager lol just that Roger was his coach at one point.


	3. spokes and tape

_Wout is quickly fascinated by Mathieu van der Poel, a boy who is, by all means, a mean little arrogant son of a bitch - a mean little arrogant son of a bitch who's really, really good at cyclocross. He's been watching Mathieu closely the whole season, observing the way he rides, how he moves from running to riding with the grace and skill of a ballerina, how he takes his turns and his off-cambers and his bunny hops. At some point, Wout realizes that Mathieu rides like he's already a professional, an adult. This is a mental jump that Wout himself, having just turned thirteen, has not made yet, but he's trying. Mathieu takes himself seriously, deathly seriously. Maybe Wout could learn from that, too.  
_

_Meanwhile, Mathieu van der Poel couldn't give less of a damn about Wout van Aert, a hick from Herentals with big girly eyelashes and a voice that's already starting to get deeper, and every single weekend, he makes sure Wout knows it.  
_

_Fourth to last race in the season. They take their usual places, side by side, this time in the second row._

_Buzz of wheel. "Morning, Mathieu."_

_"Hey," Mathieu replies, scowl already etched on his face._

_"I got a cell phone this weekend," Wout says, taking the device out of his back jersey pocket. It's one of those phones that's half MP3-player, where the keypad slides out vertically._

_"That's cool." Mathieu clearly does not think it's cool. Always one to participate in a game of one-up-manship, he pulls out his new Motorola Razr, thin and sleek, for comparison. "I've got this one."_

_"I was thinking we could trade numbers," Wout offers._

_The response is swift and cold._

_"Why? We're not friends."_

_Jesus, Wout thinks, what a prick. He picks himself up and tries again._

_"Yeah, ok. Could come in handy, though," he presses._

_"Fine." Mathieu rattles off the number and Wout adds it to his contacts, telling Mathieu to slow down. He sends a text. "Wout" it says. Mathieu's phone buzzes._

_"Very original," he frowns, reading the message._

_"I'm feeling good today," Wout says, lazy smile on his face as he toys absently with the velcro on his cycling gloves._

_"So, a second-place day for you, then. You've had a few of those lately." Mathieu folds his arms, something he does when he's defensive and anxious._

_Wout shrugs. "Who knows? Maybe first."_

_Mathieu laughs at him in a way that makes it clear that he is, in fact, laughing_ at _him. It's a barking, insulting laugh._

_"Okay, Wout," he says. "You do that."  
_

_The sound of a whistle, the sound of clipping in, the sound of clacking rim brakes, the sound of chatter dying. These are the sounds that will surround them for decades to come, sounds accompanied by those made by the body, pulses in ears, deep inhalations of breath._

_The announcement: "Any time in the next thirty seconds."_

_"See ya," Mathieu drawls, in the way he always does, with that same smirk. Unlike all the other smirks before it, Wout smiles back._

_The whistle blows, and it's bunch-sprint chaos, wrecks in the back, fights for the front, and when it dissolves, fizzling out once tarmac turns into dirt, it's not Mathieu at the front. When they cross the finish line, it's not Mathieu being handed the blue ribbon, either. Wout stares at it, all silky and gold-silk-screened with "First." He runs his muddy thumb over the word, in awe, in love. He's won, he's gotten a taste of winning, and he realizes he's been starving for it, that he's been stranded on the island of second place for the last few weeks begging for sustenance._

_Still, Wout's a good country boy, all manners and genteel sensibility. He wants to hold the ribbon over Mathieu's head, repeat Mathieu's words back to him in a nasty, taunting tone, but he does not. His mother didn't raise him that way. Wout turns to Mathieu whose face is blank, his eyes glued to his muddy cleats._

_"Good job, Mathieu," Wout tells him. "That was hard."_

_Mathieu takes off his polarized cycling glasses, revealing, for the first time, pale blue-gray eyes. The stare is cold and intense and Wout withers under it._

_"Don't get used to it."_

_Except Wout wins next week, too. And the week after that. As he heads with his father towards the parking lot, he gives Mathieu a casual wave and a smile._

_"See ya," he says._


	4. heartbeat

_Wout's cellphone rings, buzzes against his thigh, its snappy, tinny ringtone interrupting him from playing a Formula 1 game on the floor of his messy bedroom. His parents are out running errands with his sister, leaving him alone for a few precious hours. He uses the time to play video games uninterrupted by inquiries for turns on the Playstation or reminders for chores he's let languish for too long. When he gets the call, he figures it's his mother, wanting to ask him what oatmeal he prefers. Rolling his eyes, Wout pulls the device out of his pocket and looks at the name flashing across the screen. Wide-eyed, he pauses the game and answers it immediately._

_"Hey, Mathieu." He tries to be casual._

_"Wout?"_

_Is that fear he hears on the other end of the receiver?_

_"Yeah, it's me. What's up?" He throws some concern in there, if only to piss off his rival on the other end of the line._

_"I'm in Herentals."_

_Wout furrows his brow._

_"Herentals?"_

_"Yeah. And, uh," Mathieu clears his throat. "I'm lost."_

_"What do you mean, you're lost? Why are you even out here?"_

_"It doesn't matter. Look, I don't have a lot of minutes left on my phone. Can you, like come get me?"_

_Wout feels a tightness in his chest. So this means that Mathieu wants to be friends now?_

_"Uh, sure. Do you know where you are?"_

_"I just told you, I'm lost, you fucking moron," Mathieu snaps. "I took the train and rode around and ended out in the country. I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere."_

_"Okay," Wout sighs, getting up off the floor. "Is there, like a sign anywhere near you? A road sign or a farm or anything like that?"_

_"Let me see." Wout hears the brrrr of Mathieu's rear wheel. "Yeah, there's a farm. I'll give you the name."_

_"Hold on, hold on, let me get a pen."_

_Wout rushes into his family's computer room and wakes the slumbering PC from its wonky 3D screensaver. He grabs a notepad and a pen, sits in the too-big office chair._

_"Okay."_

_Mathieu tells him the name of the farm. Wout opens up the web browser and goes to Mapquest, types in the information, prays that the website will come through. It does. He prints off the directions in black and white, hoping to save color ink, not wanting to awaken the wrath of his father's frugality._

_"Mathieu?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"I printed off directions. You're only like ten kilometers from my house. I'll come get you. Just, like, stay there, okay?"_

_"Okay."_

_The line goes dead. Wout races to get into cycling clothes, not even checking what's clean or dirty. He grabs his helmet, the paper with the directions, and the key off the counter, wheels his bike out of the garage side door. Heart pounding in his chest, he speeds down the road, hoping his parents won't be home before he is, lest they be worried. The roads are empty, only a handful of cars ever pass him. He's riding like it's the Tour of Flanders, full gas, hoping to get into a good position before the peloton hits the punishing cobbles that promise to wreak havoc on it. Finally, he sees Mathieu sitting there on the side of the road, bike resting against the ground._

_"Mathieu!" he shouts, sheets of paper flapping in the breeze as he slows. Mathieu stands up, gathers his bike._

_"Hey."_

_Wout notices that Mathieu's eyes are red._

_"You okay?"_

_"Yeah," Mathieu mutters. "Just take me to the train station, okay?"_

_Wout furrows his brow. "Train station? That's far as fuck away. My parents will be back any second, and if they find me gone they'll kick my ass. Just come back with me."_

_Mathieu clearly doesn't have much of a choice. "Fine."_

_They set off._

_"Something wrong?" Wout asks, trying to be compassionate and not over-eager. He's secretly thrilled that Mathieu, son of a celebrity and the best in the youth cyclocross peloton is here with him, coming to his house. It's getting dark, and Wout doesn't have a light on his bike. He picks up the pace._

_"Adrie's going to fucking kill me."_

_"You didn't tell him where you were going?" Wout finds it amusing that Mathieu calls his father by his first name but doesn't say anything to that effect._

_"No, he thinks I went out on the trail by my house. That was four hours ago."_

_"Did he call you?"_

_"Yeah, but I didn't answer. I only had two minutes left on my phone, and it was either call him or you, and you live here."_

_Wout swells up with pride. Thinking he's outsmarted Mathieu, he asks: "You couldn't text him?"_

_"He doesn't have a cell phone."_

_"Oh."_

_They ride in silence for a few kilometers, both trying to get used to each other's presence, awkward and burdensome, dusk casting long shadows behind them._

_"Why did you come here?" Wout's tone is soft._

_"It's stupid," Mathieu admits. "But Adrie always said, 'know thine enemy' - try and find out everything about him. There's bound to be something you can use against him in battle."_

_"Wait, so I'm your enemy now?"_

_"You beat me three times. Nobody else has come close."_

_Wout is deeply flattered by this, as well as amused by Mathieu's botched reconnaissance mission._

_"So, uh, what did you think you were going to find out about me by coming to Herentals?" he drawls._

_"I don't fucking know," Mathieu huffs. "Like, the terrain you train on and shit. Where you get all your power from, but all I see is fucking fields."_

_"Mathieu," Wout laughs. "That **is** the terrain I train on. Muddy fields, sometimes the woods. There's a trail I could show you sometime." _

_"Why would you do that?" Mathieu seems genuinely baffled by the offer._

_A shrug. "I dunno. I like riding with you. You're like me."_

_"I am **not** like you." Indignant. _

_"No, you are. You're obsessed with 'cross. Me too. I want to go pro someday."_

_"Good fucking luck," Mathieu cackles. "You'll need a lot of work. You may have raw power, but you're sloppy as shit."_

_Wout smiles. "That's what training is for, isn't it? There's time for that."_

_"You seem so confident." Skepticism._

_"I know myself."_

_Wout slows and Mathieu slows with him._

_"Thank Christ," Wout swears, rolling into the driveway._

_"What?"_

_"My parents aren't back yet."_

_They dismount. Nervousness. "Are you sure this is okay?"_

_"Yeah," Wout reassures him. "I'll call my mom after you're done calling Adrie."_

_Wout unlocks the garage side door and the two lean their bikes up against the wall, careful that their pedals don't get caught in each others' spokes. They head inside. Wout can tell by Mathieu's face that the other boy's not impressed by his parents' humble abode. He picks up the cordless phone off its dock and hands it to his companion, who mutters a thank you._

_A pause. Wout heads to the fridge for a sports drink, pretending he's not listening._

_"Hey, Adrie, it's me." A wince. "I'm okay, I'm okay, Jesus. Yeah, I know. I'm in Herentals." A pause. "I took the train. Look - look, I'm with Wout van Aert, you know, from 'cross practice? Yeah. Okay. Pick me up?"_

_Mathieu puts the receiver on his shoulder. "What's your address?" he asks Wout, who tells him, Mathieu repeating the information into the phone._

_"Why are you so mad? I'm just doing what you told me, Dad, you know? Know thine enemy? I know, I know, I should have let you know. I'm sorry. An hour? Okay. I will. Okay. Bye."_

_He hangs up. Wout raises an eyebrow._

_"Adrie told me to tell you he says thanks," Mathieu grumbles, handing Wout the phone. "He's coming to get me."_

_Wout's reeling at the idea of Adrie van der Poel setting foot in his house, but he tries to hide his excitement, instead dialing his mother's cell phone number._

_"Hey mom. I've got a friend over, from 'cross. He's leaving in an hour. Is that okay?" Wout smiles and gives Mathieu a thumbs up. "Okay, I will. Love you too. Bye."_

_An awkward silence._

_"So, uh, what do you want to do for an hour?" Wout asks, unsure of why he's so nervous other than the fact that his companion is both clearly contemptuous of him as well as an intimidating person writ large. Mathieu takes off his helmet revealing messy pale blond hair, sets it on Wout's kitchen table._

_"Got any video games?"_


	5. launch

"Why are you doing this?"

"What?" Wout smiles, hands on the steering wheel, eyes fixated on the road in front of him. Mathieu looks at the GPS data on the car's dash display, aglow against a backdrop of early night. An hour to go.

"Driving me to Kapellen, talking about this shit from when we were kids."

Wout's expression is wistful. "The baby's gonna come any day now. I've just been thinking a lot about my own childhood, you know?"

Mathieu's gut tightens. He can't stand the intimacy settling over them. It makes his skin crawl, sounds alarm bells in the back of his throbbing head, arouses a vague carsickness in the pit of his stomach.

"What's that got to do with me?" he snaps.

A sigh. "I don't know, Mathieu, okay?"

"You've got other friends you can talk to about your baby angst," Mathieu complains. "No offense, but I don't care."

Wout's voice is quiet and level, methodical. "It's not just about that. It's, like, a new life's gonna be put on this earth and, I don't know, it's making me reflect on my own life in a way I didn't expect. Like, I want to make amends, you know, for the things I've done. The people I've hurt. I want to start fatherhood with a clean slate."

"That's your life, not mine," Mathieu frowns, ignoring the sensation seizing at his chest. "Don't bring me into your noble, self-help bullshit."

"Yeah, okay," Wout huffs, clearly frustrated. "But you're a part of that life, too."

"No, Wout, we're not doing this," Mathieu tells him, the words coming out strained. "We're just two guys who ride bikes together. That's it."

"Mathieu." Softness, softness that brings back things - memories, feelings - Mathieu's now red-alert, all-hands-on-deck trying to repress. 

"Don't 'Mathieu' me. Christ. We're not gonna do this. I'm telling you right now."

"Do what?"

"You know what. Talk about it. Go see a fucking shrink for that shit."

Wout turns to Mathieu, gives him a compassionate gaze, an effective battering ram against Mathieu's strategic defenses.

"We never made peace with it."

"Oh, no, no, no. That's on you," Mathieu protests. " _I've_ made peace with it."

"Then you should be fine with talking about it." A little smugness.

"What is there to talk about, anyway?" A groan. "We were kids doing stupid shit."

"You know that's not true." Gentler, now: "We both know that's not true."

It's true. They both know it was much, much more than that.

Silence, the sound of tires on tarmac.

"I don't want to open that door," Mathieu says, a half-confession. "I don't like what's on the other side, you know. There's a _reason_ we haven't talked about it."

"You want to go on like it never happened." It's an accusation.

"I'm not the one who got married and had a fucking kid," Mathieu snipes. He wishes Wout would pull over and let him out. He'd rather ride back to Kapellen even if it took him all night than walk this tightrope of a conversation.

"Do you hate me for it, Mathieu?" There's pain lurking beneath the surface, Mathieu can tell by the tone of Wout's voice. He can't stand it.

Fuck you, he thinks.

"Stop saying my name like that."

"Like what?"

"Like _that_."

"Answer my question."

"I don't hate you, Christ," he groans. "I wish I did. That'd make it easier."

"Make what easier?"

"I don't know," Mathieu throws his hands up. "Life."

"Okay. Life," Wout says, deadpan. "So you're saying you don't think about it? Ever?"

_Stop. Please stop._

"What kind of statement is that? I mean, fuck. I try not to, okay? I have my own life now."

"And I'm still in it, which is why we should fucking talk about it. Jesus Christ, we're going in circles here, Matje." Wout's angry now.

"Do _not_ call me that." Seething. "You think that by talking about it, by purging yourself before God or whatever the fuck that your son is gonna somehow not turn out to be just like you? Some superstitious Catholic hick shit like that?"

Cold silence.

Mathieu's not done hurting Wout. "And what if he is, Wout? Like you? Like _that_? What are you going to tell him?"

Wout slams his hand on the steering wheel, startling his companion, who is reminded by the speed of the trees blurring by his window that Wout, as the driver, is in a position to kill him. Silence again, so still, so cold that Mathieu can hear the deep inhale and exhale of Wout's breath as he tries to compose himself.

"The truth," he answers, voice low and unsteady.

"The truth," Mathieu repeats, doubtful.

"Yeah," Wout's quiet now, quiet but insistent. "The truth. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I'll hope it works out better for him than it did for us."

The memories are inescapable now.


	6. cornering

_They never really become close._

_Something about Wout beating him changes Mathieu, puts spite in his legs and fire in his heart and he comes back stronger than ever. When Wout starts racing the next season, Mathieu is no longer there, having moved up in the world, having qualified for things Wout's still dreaming of. For three years it is like this. For three years, they pass each other like ships in the night. Wout exists to Mathieu only as occasional glances and greetings when they're spectators to the same races, at other cyclocross events, Mathieu attended to the entire time by Adrie, who keeps careful watch over him._

_"Hello Wout," Adrie would always greet him, voice all cheery and warm. "Mathieu, say hi to Wout."_

_Dour. "Hi, Wout."_

_Wout never forgets Mathieu. Mathieu is where Wout wants to be, Mathieu's life is the life Wout dreams of. Wout lies awake at night, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old and pictures what it's like to be Mathieu. He pictures Mathieu's house, which certainly is bigger than Wout's, full of laudable guests, Adrie entertaining them, sharing stories of the Tour de France and the cobbled classics well into the night, Mathieu lying on the sofa playing his Nintendo DS, not a care in the world. Wout longs for a life like that._

_For three years, he works. He toils like the Flandrian farm boy he is, in muddy fields and backwoods off-cambers, on the road and off it. Cycling becomes his life, to the point where all his clothes smell like earth and rubber no matter how much his mother washes them. He comes home from school and immediately rushes into the garage, grabs the 'cross bike off its rack and heads outside, no matter what the weather._

_He memorizes all the roads and paths, including the one he found Mathieu on the side of waiting for him in that fluke incident of togetherness that tugs at the back of Wout's mind as a forever almost - almost friends, almost rivals, almost close. Every night, he watches replays of old races, watches videos of his hero Sven Nys, studying his movement, his technique, his strategy. Every weekend, as a reward for making it through another week of schooling Wout couldn't care less about, he trains with Roger, who brings his daughter Sarah with him sometimes. She watches from the sideline with clever eyes.  
_

_With practice, all things become easier because the drive never goes away. When Wout soars over the crest of a root-littered hill, he starts to feel like he's dancing, graceful and lithe. When Wout undresses for the night, he runs his fingers over the musculature in his thighs, marvels at the ridges of taut muscle, one of many parts of a body changing so fast the boy feels left in the dust, a passive observer of his own form._

_It's a sunny Saturday in October when Wout sees Mathieu again on the starting line, tall and lanky with elegant shoulders and a deeper voice. Wout's taller too, mop of brown hair flopping over his forehead, his big hazel eyes guarded by impossibly long eyelashes. Now that his braces have come off, he smiles more._

_"Hey, Mathieu," he says, as though no more than a week had passed since that last race of the season three years ago, a race Mathieu won, gloating to Wout: "I told you, don't get used to it."_

_"Wout van Aert from Herentals," Mathieu scowls. "You made it. Took you long enough."_

_"It's been a while."_

_"You're taller."_

_"And faster."_

_"We'll see."_

_The whistle, just as it was before, so familiar to them now. Anytime in the next thirty seconds. There's lights above them now, a proper banner. For the first time in Wout's life, it's real racing. Next year, there's a shot at the Under 19 National Championships at stake. He's alive, in his element, excited, happy, truly happy. This is bliss, earned and deserved. Mathieu turns to him._

_That same smirk, curling and mischievous at the corner of those thin lips._

_"See ya."_

_The sprint, hard fast, punishing, but the country boy holds his own against the high-class regulars, and when he rounds the turn into the mud, his hands grip the handlebars as though they were made just to do so. Mathieu's_ _right in front of him, and in a moment of intense, slow self-awareness, Wout comes to the conclusion that he is, in fact, powerful. They cut around another corner, and as they head onto the first climb, Mathieu glances behind him, a casual look over the shoulder, his face one of perfect, crystal clear concentration._

_Wout realizes he's missed him._


	7. steps

_Begrudgingly, Mathieu comes to respect the country boy from Herentals._

_Every week, Wout's right there with him, his jaw slack with effort, his eyes narrowed in concentration, over turns and off-cambers, up the stairs, across the bridge, in the final lap of tarmac. Sometimes he even wins, especially if it comes down to a match sprint, something Mathieu has to admit Wout's got a talent for snatching. It takes a long time, but Wout feels Mathieu's studious gaze on him more and more as the weeks pass. He rides harder and smarter to try and earn more of Mathieu's attention and soon, they start to chat before the races, a victory more special to Wout than any he's won on the bike so far. In most of their early conversations, Wout listens to Mathieu brag about one thing or another, but it doesn't matter, Wout's nodding and smiling anyway, grateful for whatever scraps he can get from the other boy._

_"Hey Mathieu. What's up with you?"_

_"Oh," Mathieu smirks, "Sven Nys came over for dinner this week."_

_Wout never knows how to respond with anything other than a mild "That's cool."_

_The pair stay quiet until the weekly "See ya."_

* * *

_After a while, Mathieu begins opening up a bit more._

_"Man," he complains. "I fucking hate school. What's the point? I'm just gonna be a cyclist anyways."_

_Wout laughs. Finally a topic he can participate in. "Yeah, seriously. I've got Cs in everything. I wish I could just quit but my mom would kill me."_

_"Adrie would put me in an early grave for sure."_

_"Why do you call your dad by his first name?" Wout asks, curious._

_Mathieu looks at Wout as if he's stupid. "Because that's his name," he answers._

_They're always cut off by the whistle. Anytime in the next thirty seconds._

* * *

_The next week. Buzz of the back wheel, squeak of rim brakes.  
_

_"Hey, Mathieu."_

_"Hey." Non-committal._

_"What's up with you?"_

_Mathieu shrugs. "I got laid Wednesday night."_

_Wout's eyes widen. He doesn't know anyone his age who's had sex before._

_"Wait, really?"_

_A confident nod, accompanied by a rather bawdy smirk. "Uh huh. Girl on the tennis team at school. We had a school project together. Total babe. Took me into her dad's shed."_

_"So is she, like, your girlfriend now?" Wout asks, wondering why he asks it as the words come out of his mouth._

_Mathieu rolls his eyes. "No. It's strictly casual. Her words not mine."_

_An awkward fidget. "What was it like?"_

_Mathieu laughs. "You mean you don't know?"_

_Wout stares at his muddy cleats. "Uh," he says._

_"It's fucking awesome," Mathieu lauds, "Nothing in the world like it. Better than winning. Too bad you'll never know either one."_

_Wout frowns, wincing. "Hey."_

_A wink. "Just kidding."_

_The whistle blows. Anytime in the next thirty seconds._

* * *

_Wout starts asking two weeks later, when Mathieu's over in the pits power washing the bottom of his cleats._

_"What are you up to?"_

_Mathieu scowls, not looking up from the ground. "Getting cleaned up. Why?"_

_"Do you want to hang out?" It comes out shyer than Wout wants it to._

_His companion ignores him, speaks to him as though he's not worthy of being spoken to. "I have to go home. Besides, what would we do?"_

_Wout shrugs. "I dunno. I got my license last month. We could drive around until we find something."_

_"What, you wanna take me out to dinner and a movie?" Mathieu teases._

_"Come on," Wout groans. "Don't be an asshole."_

_A smirk. "Too late for that."_

_Mathieu shuts off the power washer, gives Wout a wave._

_"See ya."_

* * *

_The following week, Wout pushes his luck further, to Mathieu's chagrin._

_"Do you want to come over?"_

_Mathieu pretends not to hear Wout. He takes his gloves off and shoves them in his back jersey pockets, handing his bike to a mechanic who starts power washing it._

_"Hey, Mathieu!"_

_He stops. Contempt. "What?"_

_"I said, do you want to come over?"_

_Mathieu folds his arms. "We both have to be at 'cross tomorrow. It doesn't make sense to go back to Herentals. It's too out of the way for me."_

_Wout resists a smile. It isn't exactly a rejection, per se. "So? You could crash at my place. I'll drive you tomorrow."_

_Fidgeting. "I, uhh, don't have an extra kit lying around."_

_"We have a washing machine," Wout replies instantly._

_"What about my bikes?"_

_"My trunk rack holds four."_

_Mathieu huffs. It looks like he's not going to get out of this one. He relies on a last ditch effort._

_"I'd have to ask Adrie."_

_Wout stares him down. "So ask him."_

_Mathieu's bluff is called. They have no choice but to approach Adrie, who's standing at the edge of the pits looking at Mathieu's bike computer._

_"Dad."_

_Adrie looks up, smiles a benevolent smile. "Yeah?" A pause. Recognition. "Oh, hello Wout."_

_"Hi Adrie," Wout says, still somewhat flustered in the presence of someone as famous as Adrie van der Poel._

_"Dad, Wout wants to know if I can hang out with him tonight."_

_"I can drive Mathieu to 'cross tomorrow," Wout interjects, ruining Mathieu's planned omission of that information._

_"I don't see why not," Adrie answers, a final nail in the coffin. "Mathieu." He pulls Mathieu close, speaks low so Wout can't hear him._ _"It's about time you made some friends in the peloton, hmm?"_

_Mathieu rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay, Jesus," he mutters, embarrassed. "I'll see you tomorrow."_

_Wout's beaming from ear to ear. "I'll help with the bikes," he offers._

_"Fine," Mathieu scowls._

* * *

_"Why do you want to hang out so bad?" Mathieu asks as they pull out of the parking lot. "Can't you see that I don't like you?"_

_Wout laughs. "You like me. Otherwise you wouldn't have said yes."_

_"You didn't give me an opportunity to say no," Mathieu counters._

_"You're so stubborn," Wout sighs. "Maybe I just want to be friends? Did you ever think of that?"_

_"We're not friends," he frowns._

_"We're not enemies either," Wout offers._

_"You're not good enough to be my enemy."_

_Wout just chuckles, further infuriating Mathieu.  
_

_"_ _Why do you even want to be around me?" Mathieu asks. "I'm not exactly nice to you."_

_Wout shrugs. "You're interesting."_

_"You mean my family's interesting. My dad and my brother and grandfather. A family of cyclists."_

_"Mathieu," Wout says, "I'd think you're interesting even if Adrie van der Poel wasn't your father."_

_This is incomprehensible to Mathieu. "Why?"_

_"Because you're good at what you do and I learn from being around you."_

_"Learn?" Mathieu furrows his brow. "I don't teach you shit. We barely ever talk."_

_"I learn by watching."_

_"Oh, so you're cheating off my test?"_

_A laugh. "Is it working?"_

_"You are getting better," Mathieu begrudgingly admits. "And surely that has nothing to do with Roger de Bie."_

_"You really can't be nice to me for more than two seconds, can you?"_

_"I told you, I don't like you."_

_Wout takes a turn onto the highway. "I think you do, secretly. And you know what?"_

_"What?" That familiar scowl. Mathieu crosses his arms._

_"I think you're lonely."_

_A scoff. "That's stupid." But it's the truth. Mathieu, like all exceptional children and young adults, is lonely. His world is so different from that of his peers that it can't be bridged by a knowledge of pop culture or expensive cell phones or good looks or swagger. He simultaneously has plenty of friends and, at the same time, none at all. Not wanting to seem vulnerable, he turns the tables on Wout._

_"What's your deal, huh? Don't you have friends, farm boy?"_

_Wout shrugs. "Sure I do. But none of them understand me like you do."_

_Mathieu's caught off guard again. "That's, uh, what's the fucking word...presumptuous."_

_"No it's not, come on." Wout rolls his eyes. "We both want the exact same thing in life. Which means we understand each other."_

_Twiddling of thumbs. "I guess."_

_They're silent for the rest of the drive home, Mathieu watching from the passenger seat as afternoon slowly descends into dusk, trashy Euro-pop bubbling from the radio._

_Wout pulls into his driveway. Mathieu vaguely remembers the house, beige and unpretentious like so many Belgian homes, from a few years ago when he got stranded on the side of the road._

_"You can have first shower," Wout offers, putting the car in park. "I have some spare clothes you can wear."_

_A sigh. "Okay."_

_"I'll hang your kit out on the line outside. It'll air dry faster that way."_

_"Thanks."_

_They get out of the car and head inside. "Don't worry about the bikes, by the way," Wout says. "They'll be safe on the rack."_

_The house is empty when they enter the kitchen. Mathieu furrows his brow. "Where are your parents?"_

_"Out with my sister. They're visiting universities this weekend. It's been like this for a while. They're never around much anyways. They both still work."_

_This is very strange to Mathieu, whose parents and brother are always home, their gazes suffocating._

_"Bathroom's second door down the hall. Hold on, I'll get you some clothes."_

_Mathieu nods. Still covered in mud, he's eager for a shower. He waits for Wout to come back down the stairs with a pair of sweatpants and a long sleeved t-shirt._

_"Thanks." Something about wearing Wout's clothes makes his stomach tumble. As he steps into the bathroom and starts the shower, Mathieu realizes he hasn't spent the night at someone else's house since he was ten. Adrie put a stop to that once it became evident that drinking was a possibility. Mathieu wonders why Adrie's so okay with Wout, but then again, Wout, Mathieu figures, must seem pretty harmless compared to some of the other kids he's hung out with in the past. Plus, Wout has the same goals, which means he won't do anything that would jeopardize his own 'cross chances. Clever, Adrie, Mathieu thinks. He showers briskly, not wanting to take too long, though it requires two rounds of soap to scrub all the filth off of him. He dries his hair with a fluffy white towel and puts on Wout's clothes. They smell like him, like earth and linen._

_Wout's sitting on the living room sofa watching television. He gets up._

_"There's soda in the fridge if you want some. My mom says I can call and order pizza for dinner."_

_Mathieu makes a noise of acknowledgement._

_"I'm gonna take a shower."_

_"Have fun."_

_Mathieu feels ill at ease in this house, a house occupied by ordinary people untouched by fate, who go about their lives making the economy churn over day after day, earning and spending, wasting their years with nothing to show for it. He wonders how such simple people could produce someone like Wout, tenacious and talented, clever and kind. Mathieu supposes that he does, deep down, rather like Wout, enjoys his easy-going, good-natured disposition. Wout's fun to ride against too, a good person to have a healthy competition with. He's not spiteful and he doesn't take things personally. Every time Mathieu beats him, Wout holds out his hand and, with a smile, congratulates him. Mathieu used to hate this display of sportsmanship until he understood that it was genuine and not staged like all the others. Everything about Wout is genuine, which unnerves someone like Mathieu who's always on his guard, always couching his speech in biting turns of phrase._

_"Hey," Wout says gently, after throwing their filthy kits in the washing machine. Mathieu looks at him, really looks at him for the first time._

_"Hey." It comes out uncertain._

_"You wanna play video games?"_

_"Depends. You got FIFA?"_

_"Oh, of course," Wout jokes. "What do you think I am? Some poor farm boy?"_

_Mathieu's surprised at the laughter that comes out of his mouth, open and genuine._

_"Who? Wout van Aert from Herentals?" he cackles, over-exaggerating Wout's slowly fading accent._

_"What the fuck kind of a name is that?" Wout counters, mocking Mathieu's voice, making it strident and high pitched._

_The two quickly become inseparable._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unrelated, but fuck, i'm so sad about tom dumoulin :(


	8. suitcasing

_"Come on, Mathieuuuu!"_

_Splash. Droplets of water sliding down pale torso and sun-kissed arms, glistening in the summer heat. Mathieu remembers this moment forever. It's the moment Wout starts stealing the breath from his lungs.  
_

_Mathieu's sitting on a ratty towel by the grassy bank of the rain-swelled creek, mountain bikes and Wout's backpack leaned up beside a nearby tree. Sunlight filters through the rich green leaves of beeches, scattering shadows over them, small blotches of respite from the hot, humid day._

_Since that afternoon in November when Mathieu stayed over at Wout's house for the first time, the two have grown closer and closer. In the spring, on weekends when they're not road racing, Mathieu drives Adrie's old station wagon up to Herentals where, surrounded by countryside, he's relieved of the suffocating presence of his family. When he's with Wout, Mathieu finds freedom - freedom from the loving, watchful gaze of his father, freedom from his sibling rivalry with his older brother, freedom from the doldrums of teenage suburban life, freedom from the constant pressure to be extraordinary._

_When they are together, they do nothing and it is glorious._

_They shoot the shit, watch TV, play video games, go for bike rides on trails and, now that the heat's ramped up near the beginning of June, swim in the creek a few kilometers from Wout's parents' house. Mathieu stays over more often than not, sleeping on an inflatable mattress on the floor of Wout's room which, by summer, becomes a rather permanent piece of furniture._

_Sometimes, on nights where there are no consequences to face in the morning, they sneak out to a fallow field with a six pack of stolen beer and look at the stars, which, to Mathieu, seem so bright and defined in the quiet country darkness. They talk about life, about 'cross, about what's going on in the World Tour, about other sports, about girls, about video games, about school and the future. When they're tired and drunk enough, they stumble back on their bikes and ride home, tiptoeing through the back door laughing all the while._

_They are friends._

_Mathieu's life revolves around racing and these visits. Everything else fades into the background, not worthy of space in his memories. He's never had a friendship this close and meaningful before, complete with inside jokes and hours of aimless, stupid conversation, and sometimes he gets emotional thinking about it. He realizes that he has, in fact, been lonely for a very long time._

_"Matje, Matje, Matje, oi, oi, oi!" Wout chants from the creek, waist-deep. Mathieu rolls his eyes, takes off his t-shirt exposing lily white skin, clearly demarcated by sharp tan lines halfway down his arms, lines that will only get more defined as the season unfurls. He tiptoes into the water, wincing at the frigid temperature, sweat beading at his forehead. Wout splashes him._

_"Pussy!" he jeers. "Just jump in."_

_Mathieu laughs, slowly makes his way into the water. When he's knee deep, Wout grabs him by the waist and pulls him all the way in, dunks him beneath the water's surface with a holler. Mathieu surfaces with a gasp, his toes struggling to find smooth stones and mud, but when they do, he gets revenge by seizing Wout by the shoulders and shoving him down. They splash each other, swearing up a storm, wet hair plastered to their faces, smiling and laughing._

_"Fuck, this was a great idea," Mathieu says, feeling refreshed from the long bike ride they took earlier._

_"I'm full of those," Wout hums._

_"Not bad for a C minus student."_

_"Hey, C's get degrees."_

_"One more year," Mathieu groans. "Thank Christ. I thought school would never fucking end this semester."_

_"When the fuck am I ever gonna use pre calc anyways?"_

_"Beats me."_

_"Speaking of endings, you still seeing that girl?" Wout asks, cocking an eyebrow._

_"Nah," Mathieu waves him away. "She's done with my bullshit."_

_"Who can blame her?" Wout teases. "You're never around."_

_"Absentee boyfriend."_

_A splash. "More like deadbeat boyfriend."_

_"What does that make you, then, O Eternal Virgin?"_

_Wout scowls. "Look, we can't all be casanovas. Some of us are sensitive. You know, waiting for the right person to come around."_

_"I'm sure you could ask Roger's daughter. She'd just give it to you." Mathieu makes an obscene hand motion. Wout blushes, tries to hide it._

_"Shut up, Matje. She doesn't think of me that way."_

_Mathieu wonders why he feels relief at that statement._

_"She's pudgy anyways," he comments._

_"She is not!"_

_"Ohhh I'm Sarah!" Mathieu makes piggy noises. Wout splashes him._

_"You're the one who's the pig," Wout shoots back._

_"I read an article that says that pigs are very intelligent."_

_"Hm, maybe you're something else then. Fucking dumbass."_

_They wade around and banter for a few minutes before the chill of the water becomes uncomfortable._

_"I'm getting out," Wout says, doing so._

_Mathieu watches, watches the water roll down Wout's body as he emerges from the depths of the creek, watches him run his hands through his hair, shaking droplets free, wet skin glistening in the simmering sunlight, his swim trunks resting precipitously low around well-defined hipbones. Mathieu can't breathe. He can't look away.  
_

_He stays in the water a few minutes longer until he, too, starts to shiver, after which he joins Wout, who's laying on his stomach eating a peanut butter sandwich, reading a cyclocross magazine, basking in the warmth of the sun. Mathieu grabs a sandwich from the backpack, and as he lays next to Wout, his pulse reams in his ears as his eyes take in the strong curvature of Wout's back. Something has changed inside of Mathieu. He feels a foreign pain lurching where his heart should be. Getting the sandwich to go down his throat takes quite a bit of effort. Maybe he's sick, he thinks._

_"Oi, Matje," Wout smiles, pointing to a photo on the page. "You're in here."_

_"Huh," Mathieu acknowledges. "I forgot about that."_

_"Are you done swimming?" Wout asks._

_"Yeah, I think so."_

_They bathe in the sunshine a little longer, just enough to dry out their trunks before the ride back._

_"You staying over?"_

_"Course I am," Mathieu says. "What the fuck else do I have to do with my time these days? No road racing this week."_

_Wout starts rolling up his towel, shoves it in his backpack. When he puts on his t-shirt, Mathieu feels a strange disappointment. They gather their belongings and ride back in silence, simply enjoying the lovely day, Mathieu preoccupied by the strange physical sensations he's just experienced. He quietly observes Wout pedaling in front of him, drinks in the sight of taut calves as they climb up a short hill.  
_

_He hopes to God he's coming down with something, hopes to God he's got a fever he can blame this on._

_The alternative is so, so much scarier._

* * *

_That night, Mathieu can't sleep. In the curtain-filtered moonlight, he watches Wout's peaceful face, lips parted, bare chest rising and falling, sheets slung across his waist. Mathieu feels that same, strange ache again. He sits there, knees to his chest, and lets it wash over him in a moment of careful self-observation._

_What do I want? he asks himself._

_Wout sighs in his sleep, his eyebrows knitted together as he fidgets and dreams. The faint light from the window pools shadows in the dips and curves of his muscular stomach.  
_

_Mathieu thinks about what it would be like feel Wout against him. The thought sends a delightful shiver down his spine.  
_

_Instantly, he knows the answer to his question. Instantly, he is afraid.  
_


	9. shouldering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> c/w: sex, masturbation

_Mathieu van der Poel is in hell._

_He tries to immerse himself in self-awareness, a kind of troubleshooting, really, an all-out attempt to figure out what's wrong with him._

_The first thing he does after heading home from his visit with Wout is call up an old one night stand of his from biology last semester. Mathieu's notable and handsome enough to have relatively easy access to sex for someone his age, and he's not shy about it - never has been._

_He picks her up in Adrie's station wagon and they drive to an empty parking lot outside of town and fool around in the backseat. As the act unfolds, he runs a diagnostic checklist on himself:_ okay, I'm making out, check. I'm getting hard, no problem, check. This appeals to me, check. No issues staying aroused, check. I can still get off, check.

_Everything appears to be functioning normally, but something is missing. Something's not there. His breath isn't getting caught in his throat, his heart isn't reaming against his ribcage and even though he still has the desire to fuck, there's an emptiness to it. Even though he's here with another flesh and blood human being, emotionally, this feels no different to him than jerking off. He's a gentleman regardless, and after his companion finishes herself off, he drives her back home and wishes her good night. It's all so casual, and he feels absolutely nothing the entire time._

_For all his analysis and despite his exercises in mindfulness, Mathieu can't connect the dots between the familiar sensation of lust and what he feels for Wout, which is something he's never experienced before, something that goes much deeper than physical desire. The answer currently eluding Mathieu van der Poel is, in fact, a rather simple one._

_He is in love._

_Two days later, Mathieu's back at Wout's, and as soon as he lays eyes on the other boy, the ache hits him like a ton of bricks._

* * *

_All Mathieu can think about is Wout van Aert. Every day he isn't in Wout's presence is agony, a kind of punishment for being alive._

_In the coming weeks, Mathieu rationalizes this in many different ways. First, he blames it on excess nervousness left over from racing against Wout (who by this point has gotten quite good at riding a bike competitively). He quickly realizes, to his chagrin, that this explanation doesn't make any sense, as that same nervousness isn't present in the actual race environment itself._

_His second train of thought is that he's never had a friendship this close before, and that these feelings are reflective of that. Maybe he's just lonely, he thinks, the thoughts taking on the quality of prayer: please, please, just let this be loneliness._

_His last ditch effort in ascribing platonic attributes to the sensations eating him alive is that he simply admires Wout as a person, thinks highly of him, hence, he's a little anxious in Wout's presence. He clings to this particular explanation for quite a while, until it unravels in the span of a single afternoon two weeks later._

* * *

_Mathieu can't find his headphones. He tears up his room, his backpack, the car, checks the back pockets of his cycling jerseys. He's bored and turned on and desperate for a good wank, but clearly he can't watch porn without headphones, at least not when everyone in the house is home, which they are, they always fucking are. He tries to remember when he last saw his headphones. After a quick retracing of steps, he realizes he left them on Wout's nightstand the day before._

_Motherfucker, he thinks, slamming the door to his room in frustration, locking it behind him._

_Desperate times call for desperate measures. He digs out the girlie magazine a friend gave him in middle school from the bottom of his underwear drawer. Mathieu, for all his talents elsewhere, is not a particularly imaginative boy - he needs clear, discrete visual stimulation, he's pitiful at fantasizing. He turns to a picture he's always liked, a buxom blonde naked on all fours looking upwards with a lascivious stare. He undresses in a clinical, hurried fashion, reaches between his legs and tries to concentrate._

_"Oh Mathieu," he pictures the blonde saying, "I want you so bad. I want you to fuck me so hard." He focuses on the words, on the magazine page, attempting to paint some kind of picture, but it does nothing for him - he can't hold on to the imagery, it dissolves in his mind's eye, requiring him to start all over again._

_Parted lips, deep voice. "Oh Mathieu." It slips in as an intrusive thought, and his face is instantly flushed, his veins coursing with heat. Mathieu fights it, tooth and nail, flips to other pages in the magazine in a last ditch effort to stave off an indulgence his body's now desperate to engage with. He comes to the realization that this is a test - either he can get off to thinking about what he really, really doesn't want to think about, or he can't. The potential answer to the question he's about to ask of himself frightens him, but, in a way, he has no choice but to ask it. His body's begging for it._

_Mathieu closes his eyes. He pictures Wout shirtless, emerging from the creek, water sluicing down his body, smiling at Mathieu, who's lying on the towel, basking in the sun. Wout joins him, and Mathieu can feel Wout's eyes on him. He crawls over to Wout, and Wout sits up, his face so close to Mathieu's now. He peers at Mathieu through his long eyelashes._

_"Aren't you going to kiss me, Mathieu?" he asks. Mathieu kisses him hard, slips his tongue between those perfect, plump lips, clutches Wout against him. Wout moans, Mathieu, please, he whispers. Mathieu kisses Wout's neck, down his stomach, Wout propping himself up on his elbows, watching as Mathieu crawls between his legs with a devilish smile. He pulls down Wout's swim trunks, takes Wout in his hand, stares at him with half-lidded eyes._

_"Mmm, Wout," Mathieu hums. "You're so hard."_

_"Please," Wout begs. Mathieu watches Wout's face as he touches him, the knitted eyebrows, the parted lips. "Oh, Mathieu, that's so good, fuck."_

_Faster, rougher._

_"Fuck, Mathieu, I-"_

_Mathieu's eyes fly open. Unable to contain the pleasure any longer, he lets it overtake him, muffling a moan in the crook of his elbow, just in time. Chest heaving, he stares at the mess coating his hand and stomach._

_"Shit," he swears, wiping himself off with his t-shirt. "Fuck."  
_

_He tries to catch his breath, his mind reeling at how little time the whole act took from initiation to completion, his stomach sick at the things he pictured himself doing._

_Well, he thinks bitterly, now you know._


	10. running dismount

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest of all the chapters, so enjoy.

_It's agony.  
_

_It's agony, the way Mathieu has to force his feelings down into the pit of his stomach every time he's with Wout. It's agony, the need to touch, to hold, to confess, each desire becoming more and more developed as time goes on. All Mathieu wants is to be normal again, to be the Mathieu he was before that day at the creek, before he felt this lump in his throat and a warm nervousness that spreads throughout his whole body, consuming him. He tries to dredge up disgust, calls himself all manners of slurs, but the longing persists, accompanied by sadness disguised as shame._

_Meanwhile, Wout's his normal self, happy and easy-going, laughing with Mathieu and cracking jokes, none the wiser. Mathieu languishes under each clap on the shoulder, each smile, each playful tackle. Every time Mathieu observes the way the water rolls down Wout's body on the days they go swimming, it tears Mathieu's lungs apart, puts an ache in his sweaty palms. When Mathieu stays the night, all he wants to do is to crawl into Wout's bed and rest his head against Wout's chest._

_Everything, everything about this is unbearable._

_No one can ever know that he's this way. He'd be singled out, made a fool of. Eviscerated. Son of van der Poel, grandson of Poulidor, one of_ them _? Mathieu pictures his father's disappointed eyes, and the thought devastates him._

_And then there's Wout. No way in hell can Wout ever know about this. It would be humiliating. Wout would be disgusted, would treat Mathieu worse than the filthy lecher he is. Their friendship would be torn apart instantly. No more staying over, no more hours spent shirtless on the floor playing FIFA, no more late nights in the field drinking beer, no more swims at the creek. The thought of Wout's absence hurts more than the pain of unrequited love, at least it does for a little while._

_At a certain point, the fear of being found out starts to crowd out everything else._

_Wout can't know. The 'cross world can't know. Adrie can't know. It would ruin Mathieu's life. It would ruin his career. It would ruin his reputation. Mathieu feels like he's walking a tightrope with fate every time he's even near Wout. He is in abject emotional pain, trapped between the desire to be in the presence of the person he loves and the utter torment such a thing brings him. June is a month of hell. It's only been a few weeks, and yet, a lifetime.  
_

_Mathieu eventually reaches a point where he cannot bear it anymore. It's becoming too much of a distraction - it has the potential to throw his entire life off course. He knows that his future as a cyclist is more important than anything, it's been ingrained in him from childhood, bestowed upon him by fate and talent and genetics. He can't let something as stupid as romance spoil all that promise. Soon, the fear outweighs everything else, even the love.  
_

_The only solution Mathieu can think of is putting an end to being around Wout van Aert._ _It's a gun being held to Mathieu's head, and after he gets home all scraped up from a particularly sloppy road racing practice, Mathieu pulls the trigger. It's for the best, he tells himself. It's for the best. It has to be this way. This is what Adrie would want. This is what Adrie would do if he were me._

_Sitting on the floor of his room, hands shaking, Mathieu takes out his phone and deletes Wout's number from it._

_Mathieu pictures Wout's smile, their playful banter, all those rides in the muddy off-cambered trails outside of Herentals. He lets out a shaky breath._

I'm sorry, Wout. I tried my best.

* * *

_In the first week, Wout texts Mathieu, gives him a couple unanswered calls. Mathieu shuts off his phone and stashes it in his bedside drawer to stave off any temptation. Any time he's not on the bike, he's laying in bed feeling sorry for himself. The emptiness of his life without Wout in it becomes apparent by the second week. All he does now is race bikes, play video games, watch TV, and sleep, the days blurring seamlessly together, nothing interesting to demarcate them. Soon, Mathieu's not sure how long it's been since he stopped talking to Wout. He rarely ever gets dressed these days.  
_

_One afternoon, he's playing Call of Duty on the Xbox in his bedroom when his mother knocks on the door. He ignores her. She knocks again._

_"What?" Mathieu shouts. She opens the door._

_"Wout's on the phone," she tells him. "He sounds upset."_

_Mathieu's heart seizes in his chest. Fuck._

_"Tell him I'm busy," he snaps._

_She rolls her eyes, hands Mathieu the receiver. "You're a grown man, tell him yourself."_

_"Mathieu?" Wout asks through the phone, his voice quiet and small._

_Mathieu's face contorts with pain. "I can't talk now," he chokes out, hanging up before he can hear the response._

_He passes the phone back to his mother who looks at him with concern._

_"Did you two have a fight?" she asks._

_"It's none of your business," Mathieu answers coldly, turning back to his game, waiting for her to leave._

_As soon as the door shuts behind her, Mathieu cries into his knees._

* * *

_In the third week, when Mathieu hears the doorbell, he thinks nothing of it, figures it's the mailman with a package, goes back to playing his game, turns up the pop music blaring in his earbuds. He doesn't hear the knock._

_"Mathieu." Adrie's voice from behind the door, which is locked. Mathieu groans, turns up the music again even though his ears hurt from it. A louder knock. He ignores it._

_"Mathieu!" Adrie shouts, knocking again, jiggling the handle._

_"What?" Mathieu shouts back. "I'm busy."_

_"Too bad. Open the door." Relentless banging._

_"Leave me alone!"_

_"Mathieu, open this goddamn door or I'm going to take it off the fucking hinges."_

_Mathieu throws the controller onto the floor. "Fine, Dad, Jesus Christ," he groans, getting up. He unlocks the door._

_"What?" he scowls, looking up at Adrie with utter contempt._

_"Wout is downstairs. Says he hasn't heard from you in weeks."_

What? _Mathieu can't breathe. He tries his best to hide the cocktail of emotions washing over him._

_"Tell him I don't want to see him."_

_"Mathieu, you're old enough to handle your own problems," Adrie says sternly. "Wout is your friend. You shouldn't treat him like this."_

_Mathieu's face contorts into a pained grimace. "Dad, please just tell him to go away, okay?"_

_"No," Adrie replies, turning away. "Get dressed, grow a pair, and act like an adult for once in your life."_

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, Mathieu thinks, pulling off his pajama pants, grabbing whatever clothes he can find, ending up in a mismatched cycling kit. He's gonna have to shut this down the hard way, isn't he? Fuck. He tries to gather the resolve necessary to be cruel to the one person he cares for more than any other. It's for your own good, it's for your own good, it's for your own good, he repeats internally, like a mantra. Mathieu steels himself and heads downstairs._

_Wout's standing in his kitchen in cycling kit, and when their eyes meet, Mathieu is overcome by grief and longing. He manages to conceal it within the confines of a terse scowl._

_"You bring a bike?" Mathieu asks coldly before Wout can even speak. Wout nods._

_Mathieu grabs the keys off the kitchen counter, shoves them in his back jersey pocket. "Come on," he says, exiting through the kitchen._

_Wout unhitches his gravel bike from his car's trunk rack, fetches a helmet from the backseat as Mathieu slides on a pair of cycling shoes._

_As they set off, Mathieu gives off the air of someone who absolutely should not be talked to. They ride in silence, turning off onto a trail Mathieu knows well. Wout rarely comes to Kapellen - he has no choice but to follow, lest he get lost. Once in the comfort of the silent woods, Wout speaks._

_"Mathieu?"_

_Mathieu ignores him, causing more suffering._

_"Did I do something wrong?"_

_"No," Mathieu mutters as they take a particularly dicey, root-filled incline with ease._

_"Then why did you stop talking to me?" Wout asks, clearly upset. "I've been trying to call you for weeks."_

_"Look, Wout," Mathieu sighs. "I don't think we should hang out anymore."_

_"What?" Shock. "Why not?"_

_"I've gotta focus on cycling. This is a distraction."_

_"But we go cycling together," Wout protests as he passes Mathieu on the inside of the trail. "It's not a distraction for me, and I'm just as serious as you are."_

_"Sorry, but you're just not on my level. I've moved on to better things." Mathieu's stunned at how cold the words are when they leave his lips._

_"What do you mean? Jesus, we race the same shit together. On the road, I'm better than you."_

_"We're not the same. Don't pretend."_

_"Mathieu -"_

_"I'm Mathieu van der Poel. Son of Adrie, grandson of Poulidor. You're Wout van Aert from Herentals, a stupid fucking farm boy who got lucky enough times to think you could make a career out of this. The fact that you think you're even worthy of being in my very presence is laughable. It's fucking pathetic really." Every word Mathieu says causes him immense pain. He hates that he's saying these things to Wout, someone he's deep down so happy to see, someone he wants to hold in his arms. It's for your own good, It's for your own good, it's for your own good, he tells himself over and over once more._

_Squeal of disc brakes. Wout stops, gets off his bike, takes off his helmet, throws it on the ground. Mathieu brakes before he hits his companion, unclips and rests languidly atop the top tube of his bike._

_"What?" Mathieu taunts. "You wanna fight me? Is that how they handle things out in Herentals?"_

_"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Wout shouts, letting his bike fall to the ground. Mathieu dismounts. Fine, he thinks, we can settle this with fists._

_"I told you," Mathieu answers, leaning his bike against a tree, resting his helmet on his right brake hood, fully prepared to fight. "I can't be seen with someone like you. People will think less of me."_

_Wout walks up to Mathieu, shoves him._

_"Fuck you."_

_"Fuck_ you _," Mathieu answers, shoving him back. "Fucking hick. I'm embarrassed that Adrie had to answer the door for you."_

_Wout lunges at Mathieu, tackles him to the ground. Mathieu tries to get Wout into a headlock, but Wout's too agile. Their bodies are pressed against each other, and Mathieu's heart is pounding in his chest as he tries to regain control, each movement of Wout against him sending heat to the instant hard-on Mathieu desperately wishes would go away. A few blows to each other's faces. Wout punches Mathieu in the stomach, Mathieu knees Wout in the balls. They wrestle for dominance, and the friction of thighs against thighs, stomachs against stomachs pushes Mathieu to the edge and over it as Mathieu slips from under Wout, managing to climb atop him, straddling him, arm raised high, ready to go in for the kill. Wout covers his face with his hands in the anticipation of impact._

_Mathieu realizes what's happened, feels the post-orgasmic haze and the stickiness in his bibs. Humiliation and embarrassment wash over him. He wants to die. He wishes God would strike him dead in a single act of violent mercy. So much for his plan. So much for Wout not knowing. This is it, he thinks. My life is fucking over.  
_

_Ten seconds pass, then twenty. Wout realizes the blows aren't coming. He opens his eyes, immediately sees the incriminating stain spreading across Mathieu's bibs. He trails his eyes up to Mathieu's face - beet red, lip split, tears running down flushed cheeks._

_Everything clicks in that moment. Wout immediately understands why Mathieu's stopped talking to him, why Mathieu's said such cruel things to him, why Mathieu is crying. He looks at Mathieu and is overwhelmed with emotion._

_"Mathieu," he whispers. Mathieu, eyes squeezed shut, shakes his head, unable to speak, his breath coming out in heavy shudders._

_Wout squirms out from underneath Mathieu, sits up and wraps his arms around the other boy's waist._

_"Mathieu," he whispers again. Mathieu opens his eyes, and in the stare that follows, they each find something the other's been looking for, for a very long time._

_Before he can even think twice about it, Wout pulls Mathieu close and kisses him.  
_

_Mathieu sinks into Wout's arms like he needs him to live, clutches Wout to him, runs his hands through Wout's hair, his heart feeling like it could explode from the sheer adrenaline and expressiveness of the moment. Still crying, he gasps for air against Wout's lips, and Wout can feel the hot tears trickle onto his own cheeks._ _Covered in dirt from their tussle, they're all alone except for the birds twittering among the treetops, and the sound of leaves rustled by the light summer breeze. Their quiet moment of devotion endures until breath's too hard to come by._

_"I'm so sorry," Mathieu stammers, wiping his messy face on his arm. "I didn't mean any of it, what I said."_

_"Oi, Matje," Wout smiles, barely able to speak. "I'm just glad to see you."_

_Unable to help himself, Mathieu covers Wout's mouth with his own once more and Wout holds Mathieu tighter against him. Mathieu feels all his sadness melt away with each passing minute, replaced entirely with relief and sheer elation. And love, always love.  
_

_"God, you feel amazing," he whispers into Wout's lips. "Better than in my dreams."_

_"You too, Matje. Shit," Wout laughs breathlessly, and Mathieu laughs with him, consumed by joy._

_"Fuck, what the hell are we doing?" he murmurs in disbelief._

_"Shhh," Wout protests. "Who cares about that shit? Fuck it. Fuck everything that isn't this, that isn't what we're doing right here, right now."  
_

_"Wout, Wout, Wout, Wout, Wout," Mathieu repeats, kissing Wout in between each iteration. "God, I'm so happy."_

_"Yeah," Wout breathes. "Me too."_

_Lips against lips, hands wandering through hair, the scent of sweat and earth. Laughter.  
_

_They stay like that for a long time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> halfway through!


	11. the pits

"You have arrived at your destination."

Wout turns the engine off, sits in the driver's seat with unfocused eyes. He remembers that day as though it happened last week instead of almost ten years ago, remembers the flood of joy and strange desire, remembers the relief, remembers the feel of Mathieu's lips, the faint taste of blood from their fight. He admits to himself that he's not as ready to talk about this as he thought he was. Ten years seems like a long time but in the grand scheme of things, it's nothing. The wounds are still so fresh. 

For a moment, they are silent and the cold winter night hangs over them heavy like lead.

"Do you want to come inside?" Mathieu's voice is quiet and unsure. He knows the risks, but the door's been opened and the idea of closing it now seems premature. They have to see this through to the end. 

"What about Roxane?" Wout asks, as though looking for an excuse.

"She's in Spain for a photo shoot," Mathieu explains, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, I don't know how she doesn't get the 'rona."

A chuckle. "The same could be said of us. What's she selling this time?"

"I don't know. I stopped keeping track. We both have enough moisturizer and Alpecin shampoo to last five lifetimes."

Silence again after the small talk wears off. The awkwardness is palpable. 

Wout looks away. "I should go," he says.

"Why?" Slight smugness, accented by a distinct chill. "You're the one who wanted to talk about it."

"I guess," Wout concedes.

Casual. "Thanks for the ride, then." Mathieu unbuckles his seat belt and opens the passenger door. The car dings until Wout takes his keys out of the ignition. Now is the moment of decision. Wout seizes it. He has to. He has no choice. If he's going to make peace with the past, it's now or never. He chooses now and the choice is just as impulsive as the kiss he initiated on that languid June afternoon all those years ago that set the course of events leading up to this moment in motion.

"Mathieu."

Mathieu cocks an eyebrow. "Not ready to leave, hmm?"

A sigh. The click of the seat belt. "Alright, Jesus."

Victory, Mathieu thinks, but he's just as nervous as Wout is. He admits he's not ready to say goodbye yet.

They get out of the car. Wout helps shepherd Mathieu's bikes through the garage side door. They enter the house via the kitchen. Mathieu turns on the lights and walks over to the refrigerator. The decor is tasteful and modern, clearly well-planned by an experienced designer. Mathieu has the money for such things.

"Beer?" he proposes.

Eyes locked on slate gray tile floor. "I shouldn't."

"Your loss," Mathieu shrugs, grabbing a bottle from the second shelf, using his keys to pop off the cap. "Feel free to roam about. Just don't sit on my white sofa. You're covered in filth."

"Look who's talking."

"Oh, trust me. If I left a pair of muddy ass prints on that couch, Roxane would hang me."

Mathieu pulls out a chair and sits at his kitchen table, gesturing towards Wout, who does the same.

"This feels wrong," Wout admits. Mathieu has to agree, though he doesn't say it. He doesn't even know _why_ it feels wrong in the first place. Instead, he chooses contempt.

"What, is lying in the bed you made too difficult for you?"

A scowl. "Don't phrase it like that. Jesus."

"We're just sitting here having a little talk, a talk you wanted to have, by the way," Mathieu says casually, taking a swig of beer. "Nothing wrong with that."

Wout crumbles under his companion's probing, icy stare. "I guess," he mumbles.

Silence again. Wout hates it but refuses to be the one to break it. They consider their words, consult their memories until Mathieu can't stand the stalemate any longer.

"Do you think about that day a lot?" His inquiry is quiet and with it, intimacy settles over them once more, uneasy and tenuous.

"What day?"

"That day in the woods."

Frustration. "Christ, Mathieu, don't ask me shit like that, okay?"

Mathieu's in a staring contest with the top of his kitchen table.

"I was so happy then," he murmurs.

"Yeah," Wout sighs. "I didn't even know why I did it."

"What?"

"The kiss."

"What do you mean?"

Wout struggles with the words because he shouldn't be saying them. "I dunno, like, when I saw you crying it just hit me all at once, you know?"

"What did?" Mathieu presses.

"The feelings. I was like, so _that's_ what I wanted from Mathieu all this time."

Mathieu scowls. "You didn't think about it before then?"

"I mean I was nervous around you, but I blamed it on the fact that you were, like, the son of a celebrity. Out of my league. And then, that day, I realized that you..." he trails off, embarrassed.

"What, Wout?"

"That you wanted me." Wout pauses, considers his phrasing, which seems too weighty, too serious, but he continues anyways. He owes Mathieu that much. "That you wanted me in a way I didn't know I wanted to be wanted."

Mathieu's heart lurches in his chest. Why are we doing this? he wonders. This is torture. Wout can sense his companion's pain, feels it himself.

"We don't have to keep talking about this," he offers. "I'm sorry for bringing it up. I don't know what I was thinking." A deep breath. Wout rises from the table. "I should go."

"No," Mathieu says, not firm but not weak either. "I want to see this through." He sighs. "Besides, you were right. We never did get closure."

Wout nods carefully, taking his seat once more. Uncertain quiet. They've made their pact and both have to consider the consequences of it. Mathieu looks up at Wout, who meets his gaze and gives him a slight smile.

"Can I at least get one of those beers then?"

A chuckle.

"Sure. Help yourself."


	12. flyover

_"Mathieu."_

_Resting against Wout's chest, Mathieu feels the vibration of Wout's voice against his ear. They're lying against a large beech, their bikes leaning on the other side of the trunk._

_"Mm?"_

_"It's gonna get dark. We should go back."_

_"Yeah," Mathieu sighs. His lip's sore from the kissing and the sucker punch Wout gave him during their fight. They're filthy, covered in mud from the tussle and from sitting on the ground. Mathieu, still in his soiled bibs, could really, really use a shower right now. They rise from the ground, stretch, and mount their bikes, Mathieu leading the way._

_"Can I stay?" Wout asks quietly as they transition from dirt to gravel to pavement._

_"I want you to, obviously," Mathieu answers with some guardedness. "It's just that we have no privacy at my house, you know? Adrie's always snooping around, plus you'd have to sleep on the couch."_

_"We can go back to Herentals, then."_

_"You don't mind driving in the dark?"_

_Wout shrugs. "My mom's the one that hates me doing it."_

_Mathieu ponders this. "I'd have to ask Adrie. I think he's pissed at me."_

_"For what?"_

_"For being a dick to you."_

_"I mean, to be fair," Wout teases, "You were a fucking dick to me."_

_"But we're all good now, right?" Nervousness._

_Wout laughs a deep, hearty laugh._ _"Jesus, Matje, we just sat in the woods and made out for three hours. What do you think?"_

_A chuckle. "I guess you're right."_

_It doesn't take them much time to get back to Mathieu's. Wout racks his bike up on the car and, somewhat presumptuously, Mathieu does the same._

_"Just stay there," he tells Wout before heading inside, slamming the door behind him._

_"Dad!" He shouts._

_"I'm right here, Jesus," Adrie replies from around the corner, scaring the daylights out of Mathieu. He looks his son up and down, furrows his brow._

_"What the hell happened to you?"_

_"Busted my face mountain biking, what does it look like?" Mathieu grumbles._

_"Hmm," Adrie hums, skeptical. "When have you ever busted your face doing anything on a bike? In the last ten years?"_

_Narrowed eyes. "What are you getting at?"_

_"Did you and Wout get in a fight?"_

_"No," Mathieu lies, mouth pursed in annoyance. "We went out on cross bikes when we should have used mountain bikes. Wheel slipped on an off-camber. Unavoidable."_

_"Okay, Mathieu." A sigh. "So you two made up, then?"_

_Christ, Mathieu thinks, Why do you care so much?_

_"Yeah. I'm grabbing some shit and going to Herentals."_

_"And how long will you be gone?"_

_"Jesus, Adrie! What's with the interrogation?"_

_Adrie shrugs. "Just trying to keep track of what's going on in my son's life."_

_Folded arms. "I wonder why you never baby David like this."_

_"Don't play stupid, Mathieu."_

_"I'm sure he'd love to hear you say that."_

_A threat. "Do you want to go to Herentals? Because I can put a stop to that."_

_Mathieu looks at his shoes. "Sorry."_

_"Fine," Adrie sighs. "Go. Don't be too much of a burden on the van Aerts, okay?"  
_

_They're never around anyway, Mathieu wants to say, but thinks better of it just in time. The last thing Adrie needs to know is that he and Wout are unsupervised._

_Mathieu runs up to his room, strips out of his sullied jersey and bibs in lieu of a pair of fresh gym shorts an a t-shirt, gathers a few days worth of clothes and throws them into a backpack before rushing downstairs and out through the front door into the humid summer evening. The sound of crickets fills the air. There's extra space on Wout's bike rack, so he takes the liberty of throwing a road bike on there too. Heart pounding in his chest, he opens the door and jumps into the passenger seat. Wout's smiling at him, and the other boy forgets to breathe for a second._

_"You ready?"_

_Mathieu's face splits into a grin. "Always," he says._

_Wout devotes all his focus to backing out of the driveway, and he sighs with relief as the open road unfurls in front of him, illuminated by headlights. They turn on some music, nothing memorable, bubblegum pop, just something to fill the silence. Wout's hand rests languidly on the center console and, after a moment of internal deliberation, Mathieu takes it in his own, doesn't let go until the car pulls into Wout's driveway an hour later._

_Never has his heart been so full, not even from winning._

_Wout shuts off the engine. He looks at Mathieu._

_"It's been a while," Mathieu murmurs, not knowing what else to say._

_"I kept the air mattress on the floor," Wout admits. "I thought you'd show up, like, any day, out of the blue. I kept telling myself that you got grounded or something. After a month, I just, like, freaked out."_

_"I'm sorry," Mathieu says, meaning it. "I didn't know what else to do."_

_A wistful sigh. "Well, you're here now."_

_The lights inside the car time out, click off. Wout's face is draped in shadows and, shrouded in the privacy of darkness, Mathieu kisses him. It's a quick kiss, but despite the brevity, it still overpowers Mathieu, still makes him dizzy, intoxicates him._

_Soft. "Mathieu?"_

_Softer. "Yeah?"_

_"I don't want you to sleep on the air mattress anymore."_

_A shuddery sigh. "Okay."_

_They spend a moment in silence, contemplating the possibilities underlying that statement._

_"We should go inside," Wout murmurs._

_"Right."_

_They get out of the car, Mathieu grabbing his backpack. Wout's parents are usually in bed this time of night, so the pair are deathly quiet when they enter. The house is dark. Wout fetches some leftover pizza out of the fridge and heats up a couple slices, making sure to stop the microwave before the timer goes off. They carry the food up to Wout's room, and as the door opens, Mathieu lets out a breath he doesn't realize he's been holding. It feels like an eternity since he's been here. Wout's room is as messy as ever, full sized bed covered in stray socks, trophies and ribbons crowding the nooks and crannies of a beleaguered bookshelf, Xbox and old bottles of energy drinks littering the top of his desk, the twin-sized air mattress, looking rather deflated, still on the floor._

_The two sit on the edge of the bed and eat pizza, too hungry to make conversation. Afterwards, they're too used to the silence to disturb it. Wout gets up to throw the paper plates into a half-full trashcan. He walks over and turns on the Xbox, which comes alive with a whir, hands a controller to Mathieu, who smiles at him._

_"FIFA?" Wout proposes, a big, lopsided grin on his face._

_Mathieu doesn't care in the least what game they play. He simply nods. They occupy their time just as they did before all this, before the separation, before the kiss. They sit on the bed and play video games on a tiny flat screen TV until it's one in the morning, until both have a hard time keeping their strained eyes open. After a few more beleaguered minutes, Mathieu beats Wout, breaking their tie._

_"Having Ronaldo is cheating," Wout complains, shutting off the console._

_"Okay, but you had Messi? And that's supposed to be worse?"_

_"Messi's only okay."_

_"Sure, Wout."_

_They're filling the time. Mathieu fishes out some boxers from his backpack and heads to the bathroom down the hall. He takes a quick shower, no more than ten minutes, digs in the bathroom cabinet for the toothbrush he'd left there, relieved to see it still in its travel case. When he's finished, Wout takes his place and Mathieu waits nervously, sitting at the edge of Wout's bed._

_After a small eternity, Wout joins him, and as he moves across the room, dodging clothes and the air mattress and other detritus with expert care, Mathieu memorizes the way the shadows scatter across Wout's bare torso, the musculature of his legs. Click of the lamp and the room is left only to moonlight._

_"Let's go to sleep," Wout half-whispers, but it's more of a murmur. It answers the question Mathieu doesn't want to ask._

_Wout crawls into bed and Mathieu crawls beside him. For all his sexual escapades, Mathieu's never spent the night in someone else's bed, and the thought of doing so with Wout strikes him as profoundly intimate. He curls up against Wout, searches for warmth and finds it._

_"Wout?" he whispers, listening to the rise and fall of Wout's breathing._

_"Yeah?" Wout whispers back._

_"I'm happy."_

_Wout wraps his arm around Mathieu, pulling him close._

_"Yeah. Me too," Wout breathes. "Me too."_


	13. off-camber

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> c/w: sex

_Water gurgles in Mathieu's ears, turning all sounds into sludge until he pops his head up above the creek's surface, catching his breath, the sun warm on his skin. He floats on his back, gazes up at the cloudless sky, watches a bird stream across it as though on some preordained, natural mission, its twittering song unfurling in triplets among the treetops. The sound of footsteps sloshing about in knee-deep water followed by a splash. Wout's arms find their way around Mathieu's waist. Laughter._

_"Fuck, it's hot as shit," Wout groans, wiping the sweat-mingled water from his face._

_"Can't believe they ride the Tour in this."_

_"Poor fucks."_

_Mathieu swims behind Wout, drapes his arms over Wout's shoulders, kisses him on the cheek. Wout leans into the embrace._

_"Hi, Wout," Mathieu grins flirtatiously._

_"Hi, Mathieu," Wout replies, coy._

_"You look good all wet like that."_

_Wout splashes him. "Pervert."_

_Mathieu swims in playful circles around Wout._

_"Only for you," he teases._

* * *

_Since that afternoon in the woods, Mathieu visits Herentals as often as he can, sometimes for days at a time. It takes them some getting used to, the transition from being friends to something more. The first few times Mathieu wakes up in Wout's arms are awkward, bashful moments of uncertainty._

_"I can sleep on the floor," Mathieu offers, but Wout protests with a shake of the head, to the other boy's relief._

_"It's just new for me," Wout confesses, eyes drifting out the window._

_Point blank. "Is it because I'm a guy?"_

_"I dunno," Wout murmurs. "Haven't done this with a girl either."_

_Mathieu's stare is penetrating. "Have you ever even kissed a girl?" It's a serious inquiry disguised as a halfhearted tease._

_"Jesus, Mathieu. Of course I have. What do you think I am? Eight?"_

_"How far did you get?" A smirk._

_Wout makes a grabbing motion with his hands and Mathieu laughs, wraps his arms around Wout's waist, kisses him where his neck meets his shoulder. Wout recoils, lets out a shuddery breath, his eyes fluttering shut. This startles Mathieu, who lets go in response._

_"Are you alright?" he murmurs. Wout swallows hard, nods._

_Quietly: "Yeah. Sorry."_

_This does not assuage Mathieu, who's now rather concerned, his mind running down a long list of worst case scenarios._

_"What is it?" he presses. "Did I do something?"_

_"It's just weird, okay?" Wout sighs, looking away. "Like, I feel like I've done something wrong."_

_A frown. "Weren't you the one who said 'fuck that shit?' yesterday?"_

_Evasive. "Yeah, I guess. I dunno."_

_"Then what's the problem?" Panicked, now._

_Silence._

_"Shit still has consequences, Mathieu."_

_Mathieu shakes his head furiously._

_"I don't care about that," he protests, taking Wout's hand in his own. "I don't give a fuck about any of that, okay?"_

_"Fine, okay," Wout huffs. Softer now, unsure: "I dunno. It's just that, like, I feel weird."_

_Frustration. "But you just told me last night you felt happy!"_

_"Look," Wout groans, rubbing his face. "I'm saying I don't know how to feel about it, okay? I could barely sleep last night. Like, fuck, I have to ask all these fucking questions about myself now."_

_"And I don't? You think you're in this alone?"_

_Wout's voice drops into a fearful whisper. "What if my dad finds out?"_

_"What if_ my _dad finds out?" Mathieu counters.  
_

_A wince. "Fucking hell," Wout mutters._

_"But you know what?" Mathieu continues. "I've thought about this too, and I've decided, fuck 'em._ _When it comes down to it, what we do is between us and God and nobody else. You understand?"_

_Wout nods, still visibly uneasy and, for a while, t_ _hey lay side by side in tenuous quietude, listening to the strange sounds houses make when no one's in them._ _Wout rolls on his side to face Mathieu, his eyes clouded with emotion, with fear and compassion. Mathieu encourages him with a little smile, and Wout smiles slightly in return. Apprehension._

_"Can I kiss you?" Mathieu whispers._

_"Yeah," Wout whispers back._

_Time slows, faces grow closer, and after a pause of indecision, their lips are pulled together by that strange gravity, the kiss soft and full of meaning._

_"Fuck," Wout murmurs, clutching Mathieu close against him._ _"Fuck, this hits so hard."_

* * *

_Mathieu floats on his back, watches Wout get out of the creek, water cascading down the toned muscles of his arms, his torso, his legs, dripping from his eyelashes and parted lips. It's everywhere and Mathieu wishes he could be each droplet, running along bare skin, touching everything on a slow, slick journey from head to toe. Let me kiss you dry, Mathieu pleads; Let me drink from the curves of your stomach._

_He envelops himself in the eroticism of it, immerses himself in every detail of Wout's image as Wout pats himself dry with the towel, paying Mathieu no mind, giving the situation a subtle hint of voyeurism. Wout catches Mathieu staring, gives him a mischievous smile. Mathieu holds the stare, tries to communicate the rawness of the desire he's shoved deep down for weeks out of a combination of courtesy and anxiety._

_"Aren't you cold?" Wout asks, cocking an eyebrow. Mathieu swims towards him, emerges from the water, lets it roll down in small rivets, hoping it does to Wout what the same sight does to Mathieu. Wout hands him a towel, and, defeated, Mathieu dries off, spreads the towel out on the grass and lays on it, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back. Wout joins him._

_They relax in languid, lazy silence, surrounded by trees and their inhabitants. This is Wout's secret swimming spot, private and undisturbed, a place he's visited religiously since he was a child. No one's around for miles._ _Mathieu watches the rise and fall of Wout's chest for an uncertain amount of time._

_The sunlight and the slight breeze wash over Mathieu, and he commits the sensation to memory. When things become difficult, even much later in his life, he always returns to this place, remembers the birdsong and the feel of terry cloth against his stomach, remembers the quiet companionship, remembers the vestiges of a carefree life before everything seemed so serious._

_Mathieu feels Wout's gaze on him and cracks a smile._

_"Like what you see?"_

_"Jackass," Wout laughs, inching closer to his companion until they're elbow to elbow. "_ _Bathing suit dry yet?"_

_"Hmm," Mathieu hums, rolling onto his back. "Why don't you cop a feel and find out?"_

_Wout reaches out and takes the hem of Mathieu's trunks between his fingers, peers at Mathieu as if to say, dare me.  
_

_"Feels pretty dry to me," he muses, his face coming closer to Mathieu's. His bluff called, Mathieu props himself up on his elbows to meet Wout halfway, and when the kiss comes, it sets him on fire, makes him famished with need, a little gasp escaping him as Wout deepens it. For all their prior trepidation, things escalate quickly. Wout's wanted Mathieu just as much as Mathieu's wanted Wout, and each quickly realizes this, quickly seizes their moment, hazy with repressed longing for one another, as lovers, as people whose lives are already inextricably intertwined. Lips part for tongues, fingers run through wet locks. Birdsong again.  
_

_Mathieu's never given much thought to which of them would be in control, but in the moment, he comes to a quick conclusion, doesn't question it, accepts his role without embarrassment as he coaxes Wout on top of him. Brushing of fabric as Wout straddles Mathieu and Mathieu's desperate to be touched, rolling his hips, panting into Wout's mouth._

_"God, you're hard right now," Wout breathes. "Fuck."_

_"Look who's talking," Mathieu teases, trying his best to be seductive, trying his best not to give away how nervous he is, how much he wants this, has wanted it._

_Wout stares at Mathieu with heady, unfiltered desire and Mathieu's heart pounds in his chest. He lays on his back, wraps his arms around Wout, pulling their bodies flush together, thighs trapped between thighs, the need of each apparent to the other._

_"I'll do it to you if you do it to me," Wout murmurs in Mathieu's ear, face flustered, eyes unfocused._

_"Yeah," Mathieu manages to choke out. "Fuck."_

_Hands shaking, Wout unties the string on Mathieu's swim trunks, pulls them down with reverent caution. He drinks in the sight of Mathieu, bare and hard and vulnerable, peering up at him with wide blue eyes. Unable to contain himself, Wout leans down and kisses Mathieu rough and open-mouthed as the desire cascades over him, swallows him, drowns him, and when he touches Mathieu, he watches his face, and Mathieu, in turn, watches Wout watch him, their eyes locked in a penetrating search for one another. Mathieu is quiet, his pleasure communicated by way of the aching, pleading stare, knitted eyebrows and deep, shaky breaths until he can't keep himself together anymore._

_"Fuck," he pants, trembling against the palm of Wout's hand. "Fuck, I'm gonna -" He can't even finish the sentence as he spills all over fingers and stomach with a helpless moan, Wout doing his best to draw the shiver out as long as possible._

_Time speeds up again. Mathieu catches his breath, peers up at Wout, who sheepishly wipes him off with his towel. Mathieu leans up, and Wout rolls off of him, sits before him, leaning back on his hands, Mathieu crawling in between Wout's legs, mouth hot and heavy against parted lips._

_"Was that alright?" Wout asks quietly, nervous._

_"Yeah, Jesus fuck," Mathieu breathes. "God, come here."_

_And so they switch roles. Wout lets Mathieu undress him and, bare before one another, they drink each other in, marveling at the similarities and differences, enraptured. Wout pulls Mathieu into a searing kiss as Mathieu takes him in his hand with loving desperation. He gets lost in Wout's lips, drunk on the sighs and the moans against his own, safe in the arms that hold him close. Mathieu, Mathieu, Mathieu, Wout pants, gazing at Mathieu through long eyelashes, bottom lip trembling, and when Wout finally cries out, Mathieu, all wound up with emotion, cries out with him as Wout unravels with such force he can barely keep his eyes open._

_In all men's lives, there are moments of intense eroticism that linger in their minds for decades to come, indulgent snippets bestowed upon them by the generosity of others. Each of these moments is precious, cherished, kept away in the most private depths of themselves. The image of Mathieu crawling down to lick the seed off Wout's stomach, an act of grace, of selfless deference and pure, naked desire, stays with Wout for the rest of his life as the single most potent instance of intimate, sexual expression he's ever experienced._

_Both are painfully aware that there is no walking back from what's transpired between them by the riverbank on the last day of June. They are different people than they were fifteen minutes ago, and in many ways, they will never be the same.  
_

_"Mathieu," Wout breathes._

_Mathieu wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, looks at Wout shyly. "Yeah?"_

_"No one's ever touched me before. No one's ever seen me..." he trails off. He doesn't need to finish the sentence._

_A soft kiss, a warm, gentle smile.  
_

_"Lucky me, then."_

_Overwhelmed, Wout clutches Mathieu against him as tight as he can. The robins start their singing again, filling the silence._


	14. embankment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another long chapter, sorry. also c/w: more sex

_Theirs is a summer of love, and even though they will have three more summers together, none are as glorious as that first one._

_It is the only time in the story of their lives where the last vestiges of a carefree adolescence elide with the visceral tenderness they have for one another. They exist in the limbo between gangly teenager-dom and an early adulthood thrust upon them by their talent and the expectations of others. After this summer, as Wout turns seventeen, the stakes will become much higher, but that is after. For now, in the fields and backwoods trails of Herentals, Mathieu and Wout are in the paradise of discovering what it means to love and be loved._

_Most of the time, they do what they have always done, which is nothing in particular. Theirs is a life of self-indulgent leisure, except now each mundane activity, be it playing video games or racing along country roads, takes on the aura of the spectacular, the revelatory. When Mathieu is with Wout, he leaves no barriers intact and is fully and completely himself, and in Mathieu's presence, Wout bares his soul, offers to Mathieu all that he is, all that he has to offer. Neither have ever been so close to another human being, so immersed in what it means to know someone and be known by them. All other people seem like strangers in comparison._

_At this point in their lives, keeping their secret is easy. They are not yet under the scrutiny of the public gaze. They are not yet important. They are two talented kids riding bikes in Belgium in between going to school, even though the transition from amateur to professional looms precipitously on the horizon. For just a little while longer, they have privacy._

_Mathieu and Wout are as free as they will ever be and they use this freedom to explore the depths of one another in the unselfconscious way only the naiveté of youth allows. Having never been hurt, they love without barriers.  
_

_"All done," Wout announces, folding the pocket knife and returning it to his back jersey pocket. Mathieu folds his arms, but he can't keep the smile off his face._

_"This is, like, so sappy, Wout," he teases. Wout runs his fingers over the letters he's carved into the young beech tree, W + M, surrounded by a rather sloppy heart. The sounds of nature envelop them, birdsong, the rustling of small mammals, the buzzing of insects, the soft tousle of leaves in a slight breeze._

_"You could have picked a bigger tree," Mathieu muses. "It would have been easier to draw the heart."_

_"No way," Wout protests. "That, like, defeats the purpose."_

_Quizzical. "What's the purpose? Besides damaging a living thing."_

_Wout looks up at Mathieu with gentle eyes. "The tree is young. It grows with us."_

_Mathieu thinks that's the most beautiful thing he's ever heard._

_"That's, uh, pretty deep," he concedes._

_"Yeah," Wout laughs nervously. "I guess so."_

_An awkward pause. Mathieu meets Wout's gaze and all cynicism, all resistance to the moment dissolves within him. He grabs Wout and pulls him into a hug._

_"It's lovely," he murmurs._

_The wind sighs in their ears._

* * *

_In the evenings, they make love. Sometimes they muffle their voices beneath the sheets of Wout's bed, whispering and giggling until all words become swallowed by desire and are transformed into sounds that communicate much more than speech. Sometimes they ride out to the fallow field with a six pack of beer and a blanket and immerse themselves in the summer heat, bodies draped in moonlight, shivering at the taste of alcohol on intermingled tongues. Sometimes, when evening seems too far away, they dive into the creek wearing nothing, build up the anticipation until it's unbearable and then unwind it on the grassy banks, a re-enactment of the first time they knew each other like this, a pilgrimage to their site of discovery._

_At first, they use only their hands, sitting side by side, touch and rhythm simultaneous, competing to see who will win the race to undo the other. They do this until they become accustomed to the vulnerability of sex, of desire itself. In this phase, Mathieu learns to communicate his pleasure, becomes comfortable with telling Wout what he wants and that it's Wout he wants it from. Meanwhile, Wout undergoes a certain kind of mindfulness. This is Mathieu, I'm touching, he thinks, and I want to touch him. I want this body. I feel the need to touch it and kiss it and satisfy and be satisfied by it, even though it is a man's body, a body just like mine. Mathieu exists in this body, and I am close to him, closer than I've ever been to anyone. What I feel for Mathieu is wonderful, and something deep inside of me makes me want to express that this way._

_The singing of crickets and whistle of night wind. Bodies against the worn, pilled surface of an old blanket, slick with sweat, chests heaving from exertion. One wipes the other off. They stare up at the stars, the only other spectators of this moment. Mathieu rolls over, drapes his leg over Wout, presses hot, lazy kisses against his lips, luxuriating in the afterglow._

_"Fuck, you feel good," he murmurs, nuzzling his head in the crook of Wout's neck._

_Hands wandering through cropped blond locks. "Same, Matje."_

_"Is this sex?" Mathieu wonders aloud in a rare moment of introspection. Wout laughs._

_"You came didn't you?"_

_"No," Mathieu jokes, rolling his eyes. "I was faking it the whole time."_

_"Uh-huh," Wout smirks, pulling Mathieu into a languid kiss. "Totally faking it."_

_"It feels like sex," Mathieu continues, arm draped across Wout's chest. "Like real sex."_

_Wout furrows his brow. "Why wouldn't it be real sex?"_

_"I dunno," Mathieu shrugs. "I dunno what counts between two dudes."_

_"I don't think it's, like, something you can quantify," Wout offers._

_"Look at you, using big words," Mathieu teases. Wout groans._

_"Come on, I'm serious," Wout protests. "Like, I think that when two people are close, when they want to make each other feel good, that's sex, isn't it?"_

_"Yeah," Mathieu agrees, finding no holes in such an argument. "That sounds right to me."_

_Silence, rich and lovely._

_"I like it," Mathieu confesses after resting against Wout for a long while. "With you. A lot."_

_A wistful sigh. "Me too, Mathieu."_

_Fingers intertwined, illuminated by the full moon, smelling of sex and high-alcohol beer and earth._

_This is the moment Mathieu finally realizes he's in love with Wout van Aert._

* * *

_The day they move from hands to mouths, it is pouring rain, and they're stuck in Wout's room. They pass the hours by sitting side by side in bed watching YouTube videos of old races, making light commentary._

_"Sucks that they were all doping," Mathieu complains as he watches Lance Armstrong careen up Alpe d'Huez._

_"All of this is, like, so fake," Wout agrees. "Nobody rides like that now. I mean, they can't. They'd, like, die."_

_"Poor Lance's blood's turned to sludge," Mathieu jokes. "Surprised he's still alive."_

_"He's an asshole. They were all assholes."_

_"I liked Indurain."_

_"Like that dude was clean, either."_

_"Yeah, but he was cool."_

_"No way. Pantani was cool."_

_Mathieu scoffs. "What? With the whole pirate getup? No thanks."_

_"He had serious balls though," Wout protests. "Panache."_

_"Panache is just a fancy word for people who wave their arms around and cry on TV."_

_Wout laughs, shaking his head, and Mathieu likes seeing Wout laugh. A mischievous smile on his face, he crawls into Wout's lap and Wout wraps his arms around Mathieu's lower back, holding him in place._

_"Hello," Mathieu says, playful._

_"Hello, Mathieu," Wout says back._

_"We're trapped inside on a rainy day," Mathieu drawls. "Whatever will we do?"_

_Wout cocks an eyebrow. "Is that a proposition?"_

_"It's not_ not _a proposition." Mathieu's face comes closer to Wout's, a clear invitation. Wout accepts it and kisses him, and the kiss is quickly intensified, is made open and lascivious._

_"Wout, you've got the perfect mouth," Mathieu murmurs, reaching up to run his thumb along Wout's bottom lip. Wout lets out a shivery breath._

_"Really?" he says, trying to play it cool._

_"Mm-hmm," Mathieu hums. "Like, your lips are so hot, hotter than any other pair I've seen, man or woman."_

_"Fuck," Wout whispers, his pants growing tighter with each word. "You think so?"_

_"I know so. I think about them all the time. Especially when I jerk off."_

_"Oh yeah?" Rolling of hips. "What do you think about?"_

_"I think about them everywhere. On every part of my body."_

_Wout can't stand waiting another second. "Fuck, Matje, take your clothes off," he pleads, and, granted mutual permission, they undress hurriedly, with giddy excitement. Mathieu crawls between Wout's legs, trailing kisses on his way down, loving the taste of salty skin._

_"You sure you want to do this?" Wout breathes, now nervous at the new terrain they're crossing._

_"No, I'm just doing this to torture you," Mathieu rolls his eyes. Wout runs a hand through Mathieu's hair, peers down at Mathieu who peers right back up at him before taking him in his mouth. Mathieu loves it once he gets the hang of it, loves the vantage point of watching Wout twitch and start, watching his expressive eyebrows clench together, watching the staggered rise and fall of his chest, watching Wout watch him. He caresses Wout's thigh with his free hand, reveling in the taut musculature gifted by years of cycling. Wout's doesn't expect the whole thing to be so overwhelming. The sight of Mathieu's act of submission, of those big blue eyes staring up at him, of that mouth around him, it's simply too much, and Wout loses control after just a few minutes._

_"Shit," Wout swears. "Fuck, Mathieu, I'm not gonna last, shit, shit, shit."_

_Mathieu doesn't mind one bit. When he's finished, he smiles, opens his mouth to show nothing in it. Wout swears again, his heart pounding in his chest._

_"Your turn, Wout," Mathieu hums. Wout's clearly nervous as they swap positions._

_"Sorry if I'm bad at this," he apologizes preemptively, kissing Mathieu's stomach._

_"With a mouth like that, there's no way you're gonna be bad at it," Mathieu murmurs. "You were made to do this."_

_"Fuck," Wout breathes. He looks up at Mathieu, locks eyes the whole time as he takes the plunge, and despite all his fantasizing, Mathieu's still not prepared for what the image of having Wout like this does to him. This is a gift, Mathieu thinks; Wout is making himself do this just to make me feel good. Mathieu stifles his moans the best he can, teeth clenched in pleasured agony. Wout comes up for air._

_"You don't have to keep it all in, Matje. I want to know when it feels good."_

_Mathieu nods, and they begin again, and this time, Mathieu moans and whimpers and sighs and says things like "fuck, Wout, that's so good" until all that's left of him is noise, until Wout brings him to the edge and shoves him off it and Mathieu's left sucker-punched, gasping for air. When he's able to open his eyes again, Wout's wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, smiling sheepishly at him. Mathieu opens his arms and Wout climbs into them._

_"I can't believe I did that," he confesses. Mathieu kisses him._

_"Don't even think about feeling bad about it."_

_A chagrined laugh. "Sorry, Mathieu, I'm gonna have to come to terms with the fact that I put your dick in my mouth."_

_"Hey now," Mathieu frowns. "I put your dick in my mouth too, and you know what?"_

_"What?"_

_"I liked it. A lot." A pause. Vulnerability. "Because I like_ you _, Wout."_

_Wout rests his head on Mathieu's chest. "I liked it, too. I like you, too. It's just still so weird for me."_

_A sigh. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I don't think about it like, oh Wout's dick was in my mouth, you know? I think about it like, Wout's with me and I want him and he feels so good and I want him to feel so good. Like, this isn't empty fucking for me. I do it to feel close to you." Silence. A whisper. "I want to be close to you."_

_"Fuck, Mathieu," Wout breathes, struck by the power of Mathieu's words. "You kill me when you say shit like that."_

_"In a good way or in a bad way?" Mathieu's afraid to even ask._

_"A good way." Wout kisses him, overcome with emotion. "A very good way."_

_Rain beating against the windowpane, thunder rolling in the distance. Wout and Mathieu, naked beneath the blanket, their fingers intertwined. Mathieu memorizes it all, takes his breaths in deep swallows. He is thankful for every second of it.  
_

* * *

_An empty parking lot. The backseat of Adrie's station wagon, a storm raging outside. Clothes discarded on the floor of the car, Wout's on top of Mathieu, kissing him, rutting against him, Mathieu bucking into the movement, both groaning at the delicious friction. They've only just discovered this new way of bringing each other to the point of no return, and Wout's addicted to it, loves the labor of it, loves the incremental heat, loves that it feels like sex, their bodies pressed up close. Lips entangled, panting, Mathieu moans, Wout, Wout, Wout. Wout throws his head back, increases the pace, so close, so close, it's ecstasy. He's almost there, takes Mathieu's face in his hands, locks eyes with him, mouth open._

_"You're close aren't you?" Mathieu pants. Wout nods, a helpless expression on his face._

_Mathieu groans. "Fuck, me too."_

_Wout reaches his breaking point, and Mathieu watches him reach it._

_"Mathieu!" he cries. "Oh, Mathieu, hold me close, hold me close, hold me close."_

_Mathieu seizes Wout in his arms, feels the tremble course through Wout's whole body, loves it, loves the feeling of Wout spilling all over him, Mathieu's name on his lips. Still reeling, Wout takes Mathieu in his hand and instantly, Mathieu comes apart at the seams, clutching Wout to him as close as he can, overpowered with love for him. They still, the sound of their heaving breaths mingling with pounding rain. It is the last day of summer._

_"Fuck, that was intense," Mathieu breathes._

_"Yeah, shit," Wout replies, grinning from ear to ear. A kiss._

_They clean each other off with some tissues from the center console._

_"Fuck."_

_Wout turns to Mathieu. "What?"_

_"I can't believe the fucking summer's over. I, like, really don't want it to be over."_

_"Yeah, me neither," Wout agrees. "It was, like, the perfect summer too. School fucking sucks. At least there's cross season."_

_Mathieu turns away. "Yeah."_

_Thunder cracks, rattles their ears. An uneasy quiet settles over them._

_Even at this point in their relationship, Mathieu worries that Wout is slipping away from him. He treats their time together as sacred, afraid to think that it is limitless, lest he waste any precious second. For Mathieu, the hiding, the repression was the worst part, and once Wout reciprocated his affection, the transition from friend to lover is easy for Mathieu. He accepts it with grace, tries to be kind to himself, tries to be gracious towards his desires, for the alternative is self-loathing, is misery, abject and total. Wout is a person, Mathieu reminds himself, like any other. We are put on this earth to love other people. To love someone can never be wrong. Still, after this expansion of their sexual repertoire, which has added another level of vulnerability, of selflessness, he is frightened, and Wout is frightened too. They are pushing things beyond their boundaries, and soon there will be no boundaries left. They give themselves to one another, but do so at their own peril._

_Softly. "Wout?"  
_

_"Yeah?"_

_"You'll still want me, right? After the summer?"_

_Wout's heart feels like it's shattering. He takes Mathieu's face in his hands, peers deep into his eyes._

_"Of course I will," he says. "I promise."_

_Mathieu kisses Wout fiercely, runs his hands through Wout's hair, takes in every synapse of stimulation, tells himself: Mathieu, I don't know what the hell you're gonna do with your life, but if you ever have to wonder what love feels like, this, this right here, is it._

_The world dissolves around them, blurred by rain and the way time slows when they're together._

_Never let me go, Wout, Mathieu thinks._

_For the love of God, never let me fucking go._


	15. shifting gears

Wout looks at Mathieu, still covered in grit, his face in his hands as he lays bare parts of himself he hasn't thought about in years. He sees a man who seems so foreign to him now, so different from the boy he knew so long ago, and yet, this is Mathieu, _his_ Mathieu.

Barely audible. "Mathieu?"

Mathieu looks up.

"Are you alright?"

Mathieu grimaces. "If I say no, you'll get up and try to leave again."

"I won't leave," Wout assures him, leaning back in his chair, taking a sip of beer for emphasis. "So. Again. Are you alright?"

The stare Mathieu gives Wout is open and full of pain.

"No," he says.

 _Yeah. Fuck. This hurts me, too,_ Wout thinks, tries to communicate that without speaking it out in the world. In the end, all he can say is, "I'm sorry."

Mathieu hates this.

"About what?" he snaps. "About starting this whole conversation? About what happened back then? About how it didn't work out? About running off and marrying Roger's daughter and having a baby? _What_ , Wout?"

Defensive. "I'm sorry that this hurts you."

"Yeah?" Mathieu sneers, his expression hardened. "Well, I wish it hurt _you_ more."

A scowl.

"You think this is easy for me, Mathieu? You think I'm just having a nice little walk in the park right now as we talk about fucking each other in the back of your dad's car? It was just as real for me as it was for you."

That's it. Mathieu can't stop himself from lashing out, from saying difficult things he's buried deep inside for far too long, where they've festered and bred a cold resentment.

"Oh, really? Because you were the one always second guessing things!" He throws his hands up in frustration. "You were always like, 'Oh Matje, I feel so bad that I put your dick in my mouth,' or, 'Oh, Matje I don't know what to feel,' or whatever bullshit it was on the day, and I was just, like, 'why can't you live with this? Why can't you accept the things we do? What we are?' It was always an existential crisis with you, and, fuck, _I_ was the one with the overbearing father. You kept me on a fucking knife's edge for _years_."

"Oh," Wout scoffs, "Like it was _so easy_ for you to just come to terms with the fact that you're like _that_ , whatever the hell you want to call it. Like you didn't feel the fear. The shame."

Something in the room changes, they both feel it. The atmosphere is charged. Mathieu instantly goes quiet, stays that way for quite a while. When he speaks again, his voice is low, the voice of someone trying their damnedest to keep themselves together. 

"Our shit was a secret and yeah, because of it, I was afraid, I'll admit to that," Mathieu concedes. "But shame? I _never_ felt ashamed of the things we did together. Not once, and fuck, I'll be honest with you right now, it fucking kills me to think that you did."

Wout realizes that he's hurt Mathieu deeply.

"Mathieu -"

"Christ, Wout," Mathieu shakes his head. "I couldn't feel bad about how happy you made me even if I wanted to. And can I tell you something?"

Wout's afraid to hear what comes next - he's already being torn apart. But he has to ask.

"What?"

Quietly. "I've never been as happy as I was that summer."

"Jesus, don't say that."

"No, it's true," Mathieu insists. "But so what, right? There's no going back to that time, you know? Because after that, shit got real, and we can't un-fucking-do it. Like, Jesus Christ, we're not little Mathieu and Wout anymore, we're, like, _famous_ people. We make for good TV until we're too old to win. No better than a couple of fucking racehorses."

Solemnly. "We chose that life."

"Of course we did," Mathieu huffs. "What else could we have done? We barely made it through school. Plus, I was Adrie's son. It's not like I had a choice otherwise. And what were you going to do? Be a pig farmer?" 

Wout winces.

"I'm sorry," he says again, unable to think of anything else.

"Oh, you're sorry!" Mathieu mocks. "You're always fucking _sorry_."

"Jesus, what else can I say?" Wout throws his hands up. "You're sitting there accusing me of not caring! Of the whole thing somehow being less important to me than it was to you! No. No, no, no, I _loved_ you, Mathieu. Don't pretend like it was any different just to make yourself into some kind of fucking martyr."

They sit there in silence. Neither knows how to continue after such a heavy statement. Mathieu looks at Wout with tired, sunken eyes.

Minutes pass in agony.

Mathieu's voice comes out small. He asks what he's wanted to ask for hours.

"Do you regret it?"

"No." Wout's response is gentle and immediate. "I mean, how could I? Like, who the hell would I even be?" _Without you_ , is the implication.

A smile twinges at the corner of Mathieu's lips. "A fucking pig farmer."

Wout laughs. "A fucking pig farmer."

For the first time that evening - for the first time in a long time - when their eyes meet, they recognize one another beneath the grit and the years they've had to carry alone. Each notices this recognition in the other, instantly. Wout wants to look away, but Mathieu holds the stare, his eyes pleading, as though to say, _Do you see me? I'm here._ Wout's chest tightens.

Mathieu acts. He extends his hand to rest in the middle of the table, palm up, an invitation. Wout stares at it. Neither of them speak, for speaking would snap the tenuous emotional thread that's connecting them.

Nervous, and with a great deal of self-directed admonishment, Wout takes Mathieu's hand in his own.

"Now," Mathieu murmurs as their fingers intertwine. "Where were we?"


	16. sand

_When cyclocross season starts again, they pretend that they're not close, that they haven't seen each other since the last season. There's a mischief to the pretending, rather like how a role-playing married couple pick each other up at a bar. It's their little secret, and they revel in it, trading banter and cracking up._

_"Oh, hello Mathieu," Wout smirks, unzipping his thermal. "Fancy seeing you here."_

_Being a year older, Wout's raced the Under 19 Superprestige series once before, but this is the first time Mathieu's joining him. Wout has to admit, it makes him a little bit nervous, considering his results last year weren't spectacular, his highest finish being sixth, something he blames on the shock to the system that comes with transitioning from the little leagues to riding with the sport's heavy hitters. He knows Mathieu will have no such trouble. He envies this._

_"Oh, hello Wout," Mathieu parrots, a grin plastered on his face. "Up for a little jaunt in the mud?"_

_"Hmm, perhaps," he hums._

_Mathieu reaches into his back jersey pocket. "Oh, hey, I got you something."_

_Wout does not expect this. "Really? What?"_

_The other boy clandestinely slips him a folded up piece of notebook paper. Wout proceeds to open it but is stopped by Mathieu's hissed whisper._

_"Not here!"_

_Embarrassed, Wout puts the note in his back jersey pocket._

_"When should I open it?" he asks, his voice hushed._

_"When you get home," Mathieu tells him._

_Their little rendezvous is cut short by the whistle._

_Any time in the next thirty seconds._

_When they enter the sprint, Wout powers through it, takes the course with ease and grace and, after an hour of shouldering, running, and maneuvering, he finishes in first place, bewildered. Mathieu, equally bewildered, finishes third. Both come to the same realization: Wout's much stronger than he used to be. On the podium, they say nothing. Mathieu tries not to feel bad about losing. Wout tries not to feel good about winning. On their way to the parking lot, Wout gives Mathieu a little smile, as if to apologize. Mathieu wishes he could kiss him, but alas, it is Sunday, and they have no choice but to part ways casually. The earlier fun of pretending wears away, revealing the latent pain of secrecy._

_"Bye," Mathieu says._

_"Bye," Wout repeats, looking at his shoes._

_Sitting in his parents' driveway, Wout reaches in his back jersey pocket and unfolds the note. On one side is a crude drawing of two stick figures on bicycles jousting with the caption "Us (in bed)." He laughs and flips the page over. The two words, so different in tone, scribbled in Mathieu's atrocious handwriting make Wout's heart ache something awful._

_"Miss you."_

* * *

_On Sundays, they trade notes, a way of getting through the hellish week absent of each other's presence. Mathieu's notes are always tongue-in-cheek or lewd on one side and sentimental on the other. Wout's notes are always just sentimental._

_Wout: A drawing of two people sitting by the creek holding hands. "Can't wait for the summer."_

_Mathieu: A drawing of a jar of pickles labeled, "Thinking about your dick in my mouth." On reverse: "Thinking about all of you, all of the time."_

_Wout: An attempted portrait of Mathieu captioned, "Sorry, I suck at drawing. Wish you were here."_

_Mathieu: A drawing of one stick figure straddling another. "Riding a big gear to the finish, if you know what I mean." On the back: "Don't let me go."_

_So it goes, week after week, each note a reward for enduring the pain of school and neck-and-neck competition. They try not to let the cycling get to them, but of course it does. In the Superprestige series, Mathieu beats Wout, and the victory hurts Wout more than he thought it would, but he does his damnedest not to let it affect him, not to let it jeopardize his feelings, his affection. Meanwhile, Mathieu's in heaven. He wins the UCI World Cup series the following week, beaming from ear to ear for the cameras, and even though he feels bad for Wout, he does his best not to think about it too much._

_For the entirety of the season, Wout is trapped between his desire to see Mathieu happy and his desire to win, his desire to prove to Mathieu that he, too, is talented._ _After all, Mathieu's won fourteen races in a row. Wout is in awe of him._

_The last note before the World Championships. Mathieu's nervous about this one, doesn't chatter much at the starting line, is clearly distracted by other things. Wout doesn't pressure him. He's got his own race anxieties to deal with. The race is short and brutal, and even though Wout puts all that he has into his pedals and steps and breathing and heartbeat, Mathieu continues his insane winning streak unabated, rides the whole damn thing with an effortlessness that, frankly, has Wout pissed off. He's been a gracious loser so far, but there's only so much losing he can take before he starts to feel sick with envy. Ashamed of this, Wout can't bring himself to say anything to Mathieu before leaving. He doesn't even look him in the eye._

_Wout almost forgets about the note in his back pocket. If it didn't fall out when he undressed to take a shower, he_ would _have forgotten about it, and then, maybe things would have turned out differently. But, for better or for worse, he notices the piece of paper fluttering to the floor._

_Frowning, he unfolds it, expecting another dirty joke, but there is none. The front page has his name in big capital letters surrounded all over by hearts. He flips it over and time stops, everything stops. The breath is squeezed out of Wout's lungs and his heartbeat is paralyzed. He reads the words over and over again, and each time he reads him, the visceral thrill seizes him once more._

_"I love you, Wout."_

_Wout showers quickly, gets dressed, doesn't care that it's a Sunday night, doesn't even call Mathieu, he gets in the car and drives like a madman to Kapellen, and when he pulls into Mathieu's driveway, his hands are shaking. He looks at the note again. He gets out of the car, sends a text: "I'm outside."_

_Mathieu, who has been agonizing over this the entire day, afraid that Wout's coldness towards him was a form of rejection, runs downstairs as fast as he can, out the front door, and when Wout sees him, barefoot in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, backlit from the inside of the house, his body is consumed by emotion, which manifests itself in an ache that swallows every part of him. He runs towards Mathieu and Mathieu slams the door shut and runs towards Wout, not giving a damn if anyone else inside sees them. Wout throws himself into Mathieu's arms, inhales his scent, overwhelmed, enraptured, helpless, ecstatic.  
_

_"I love you, Mathieu."_

_Mathieu's crying. He buries his head in Wout's shoulder. "Fuck, I'm so glad."_

_"Don't cry, Matje." Mathieu looks back up at him and Wout wipes the tears from his face with his thumbs. "Don't cry."_

_A kiss, quick, clandestine, full of feeling._

_"Let's go somewhere." It's a whisper. It's a plea. Wout heeds it._

_They drive to the parking lot at the head of one of the trails Mathieu rides on, and as they bring each other to paradise in the back seat, the words they whisper are electric and heavy and wonderful and they are drowning in them. Mathieu cries Wout's name like it's a last-effort prayer before ascending to the gates of heaven and Wout's left breathless and shaken and alive. He knows what it means to love and be loved, and he is thankful that he knows this, that this gift has been given to him in his life. Mathieu is warm and lovely and everything Wout wants and everything he wants to be. They hold each other close, tell each other kind things until it's too late in the evening, until the time where the consequences of staying out any longer bear too much risk. Both hate the departure, both desire nothing more than to run away together and leave the world behind, but alas, such a thing would be impossible. They hate this too._

_When Mathieu finally heads back inside, Wout sits in the driveway and lets the bittersweet tears run down his face._

_He is consumed by the visceral power of first love._

_He is overcome with joy that this love is reciprocated._

_He is deathly, terribly afraid of a loss that even now, albeit in the back of his mind, he knows will be all but inevitable._


	17. barriers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> c/w sex

_There is only one last boundary to cross now, and they cross it at Koksidje._

_Mathieu's been thinking about it for a long time, and thinking about it, about the day Wout will finally take him is what gets him through the agonizing weeks apart. Wout, however, hasn't thought about it at all. He's totally ignorant of such things. The possibility of being inside of Mathieu never occurs to him until Mathieu asks him about it one Saturday, when they've managed to sneak away for some time alone together in the back of Wout's car._

_Bodies slack and slick and satisfied. They luxuriate in the afterglow, draped all over each other._

_"Hey Wout?"_

_"Mm?"_

_"When are you gonna fuck me?"_

_Wout furrows his brow. "Aren't we already fucking?"_

_"No," Mathieu clears his throat. "I mean, like, go all the way."_

_Confusion. "Haven't we, though?"_

_It occurs to Mathieu that Wout doesn't know how two men fuck each other, which surprises him. "Do you even know what I'm talking about?"_

_"What do you mean?" Wout's starting to get frustrated._

_"Jesus," Mathieu laughs, bewildered. "Don't you watch any porn?"_

_Wout rolls his eyes. "Mathieu, I don't have my own computer. Like hell I'm gonna jerk off in the home office."_

_"Uh, well, okay," Mathieu stammers, realizing that he's going to have to explain the concept to Wout. "You know that you can fuck me, right? Like, be inside me."_

_Mathieu watches Wout connect the dots in his mind. Wout turns beet red._

_"Oh," he says._

_"Oh," Mathieu repeats._

_Uncertainty. "Does that, like, even feel good?"_

_"Like I'd know!" Mathieu sputters. "Jesus."_

_Wout looks away. "I don't think I'm ready for that. It seems, like, really crazy."_

_"Okay," Mathieu murmurs, disappointed yet thankful for the honesty._

_The conversation ends there._

_They don't talk about it again, but the thought lingers in the back of their minds for quite a while. Meanwhile, Mathieu experiments, tries his fingers in the shower, wonders if there's a way they could do this while still facing one another. It is an awakening for him, this desire to be made love to, this desire to share his body in the most intimate way possible. He reads articles online on his new iPhone, daydreams in bed about what it would be like to be so vulnerable, so possessed by another person. He feels some empathy with women, ponders if this is how they think about sex. For months, they are in sexual limbo, Mathieu keeping a bottle of lube in the glovebox of the station wagon, hoping that someday it'll come of use. But Wout's still skittish of the idea, vaguely nauseated by it, has a hard time picturing himself doing something so taboo. He feels dirty just thinking about it, a passive sinner, lecherous and lewd._

_One day, however, that changes._

_Wout's lost the World Championships, but that doesn't matter, he doesn't even remember it, his mind is wiped to oblivion the second he sees Mathieu in the rainbow bands. The image tears Wout to absolute shreds, and even now the only thing he can compare it to is how he felt when he saw his wife at the end of the aisle on their wedding day. When the commissaire slides the jersey around Mathieu's shoulders, Wout can't breathe, he can't think, he has never seen someone so lovely in all his life, has never wanted someone more and never will._

_The backseat of Adrie's station wagon, folded down. They'd rent a hotel room if they were old enough, but this will have to do for now. Wout in between Mathieu's legs, kissing him like a starving man, all full of longing and joy, his hands buried in blonde locks, his breath coming in deep swallows. He consumes Mathieu and is consumed by him, pours all of himself into the touch, passionate and aching. He loves with everything he has. Mathieu takes off the World Champion's jacket, wraps it around Wout's bare shoulders, gives him a little smile as he unzips the matching jersey, exposing his chest to cool air. Wout is deeply touched by the gesture. He slides the jacket on with a giddy, drunken grin._

_"God, you look hot in that," Mathieu breathes. Wout's face collapses into emotion. He takes Mathieu in his arms and escalates things._

_"You're beautiful, Matje," he whispers._

_Mathieu's sucker punched by the words._

_An intense stare. "Fuck, I want you."_

_They undress each other with as much patience and reverence as they can muster, given the desperation._

_"Put the jersey back on," Wout breathes in Mathieu's ear._

_"You too," Mathieu answers, and they do so, bare now except for the mark of champions. Mouths and hands everywhere, the windows of the car fogged up, concealing them from the world even though no one's around for miles. Panting and heaving of breath, bodies intertwined. Wout's not sure how to ask for what he desires, but he swallows his pride, tries his best._

_"Let's make love," he chokes out, feeling stupid as he says it. But Mathieu thinks its wonderful._

_"Yeah," he breathes. "Hold on." He contorts himself, crawls to the front of the car to get the bottle out of the glove box and when Wout sees it, the whole thing becomes real to him and he is frightened._

_"I'm, like, really nervous," Wout confesses. Mathieu smiles gently._

_"Don't be."_

_"What if I hurt you?"_

_"Just go slow."_

_It takes several tries, but Mathieu is committed, and when Wout's fully inside of him for the first time, he doesn't mind the intrusion, finds it to be powerful, both as a gesture and as a sensation, albeit strange and slightly uncomfortable. His breath is thin and wheezy, he looks up at his companion with wide eyes. He is as vulnerable as a man can possibly be, and unbeknownst to him, he will never share his body this way with anyone else for the rest of his days on Earth. Mathieu has fucked multitudes, has taken plenty of other partners, but he has only ever belonged to Wout._

_"Fuck," Wout breathes, taking in the sight. "This is so intense."_

_Mathieu holds him close. "You can move now," he murmurs. "It's okay."_

_"It feels good, Matje," Wout chokes out, his movement slow and methodical so as to not hurt his companion. "It feels, like, really good."_

_They get the hang of it, and once the last of their barriers is let down, they immerse themselves in one another, and the whole act seems natural, like they were made to do this since the beginning of time. Mathieu soon discovers that deep inside of him lies a mystery which grants the act its ecstasy, tells him that it can't possibly be wrong, and he clings to Wout for dear life, is flooded with warmth made warmer by love, pleasure made sweeter by selflessness, Wout's name a whispered mantra. Tears of exertion roll down Mathieu's face. He touches himself only when the tension becomes unbearable._

_"Wout," he pleads, "Wout." Wout kisses him, drinks Mathieu's moans from his lips, feels every twitch and tremor with wondrous clarity. They move in unison, take and create joy in each other to the fullest possible extent until Mathieu shatters first, explodes, comes completely undone in a way that consumes his entire body, extinguishes him. He opens his mouth to scream but no sound comes out. Wout holds Mathieu closer, buries his head in Mathieu's shoulder, gives himself permission to let go, and after a minute, trembles to glorious completion. Mathieu, Mathieu, Mathieu, he gasps for air like a drowning man, and Mathieu's fingers weave between locks of Wout's hair._

_Wout catches his breath, feels the expansion and contraction of his chest in time with Mathieu's, their skin slick with sweat. Wout finally regains the strength to prop himself up again, and their bodies become disconnected once more. Wout looks at Mathieu, who's wiping himself off with his bibs. Mathieu catches the stare and gives Wout a small, loving smile. In that instance, the magnitude of the act washes over Wout and, unable to fight it, he bursts into tears._

_Mathieu understands. He embraces his lover, holds him gently, runs his hands along his back, lets him feel all that he feels.  
_

_This is the climax of their relationship, the apex of the off-category climb they've embarked upon in each other's slipstreams. They have given all of themselves in order to crest it, and in doing so, the descent is perilous and chaotic and uncontrolled and twice as long as the climb itself because they're white knuckling the brakes the whole time, wishing they could turn around, wishing they could stop gravity in its tracks. At the foot of the mountain, there will be nothing left to salvage except for what they can see from over their shoulders, that is to say, their memories._

_Life happens to them. Against life, they are powerless._


	18. match sprint

The last of their firsts gives way to the first of their lasts.

They don't want to talk about it, about the end - but it is inevitable.

Mathieu wills the tears to roll down his face - to show, in some backwards way, that he's feeling something, to physically symbolize the grief of the moment - but his body resists, and he looks at the clean, lacquered surface of the table with glassy eyes.

"Why did we stop?"

Wout shrugs, sighs deeply. He's trying to regulate himself, trying to avoid being swept up in the emotion of reliving. He wants to let go of Mathieu's hand, but he doesn't. He continues to hold it out of courtesy, or, at least that's what he tells himself. Their hands are the link that keep the conversation going, a taciturn statement of their mutual weakness. If they separate, everything will shatter.

"Things got too hard," Wout says, after a while.

Mathieu hates this explanation, finds it too simple to describe the gradual unwinding of something so monumental.

* * *

_Racing at the world championship level for the first time does something to them, puts a sickness in their stomach and envy in their veins and after the season, despite their physical intimacy which is intense and full of passion, they feel hollowed out, drained. The months that unfold between then and the summer are agonizingly slow and yet so mundane that they pass quickly. When the summer finally comes, they're both hoping that its presence will somehow bring them back together, make them the same way they were prior to being pinned under the relentless lens of public scrutiny. But this year, and for all the years after, the road racing season sweeps them away for weeks at a time._

_Still, they persist._

_They still play video games and watch races and ride bikes and make their pilgrimages to the creek, the site where they first found paradise. They do the things they've always done, summon themselves to passion, feel it in fleeting, dire moments. However, the rush is not quite the same. There's an uneasiness to it now, an anxiety, pervasive and nagging._

_Mathieu loves Wout and Wout loves Mathieu, but they no longer love each other with any sense of freedom. Constraints are placed on their love that fracture it and allow distance to seep and spread within its cracks. It is not that Mathieu and Wout have changed, but rather that their world is different. They are both on the precipice of being professional athletes, rising stars, known rivals. The feelings they share are not compatible with a world that expects them to hate one another and yet be polite and sportsmanlike at the same time._

_Love is like fire, like a candle, alive and dancing and glowing - but the reality Mathieu and Wout enter into as young adults puts a jar over that flame, and eventually, it is suffocated, has no oxygen left to burn. The secret becomes too hard to keep, its consequences too hard to bear, and yet, they carry on for three long years out of sheer tenacity, born from the naive belief in the power of love to triumph above all else. When the tenacity runs dry, they keep going by means of the shared fear of loss that seizes them when they are alone at night in the dark. At some point in this, they become less like boys and more like men, in appearance and in the seriousness with which they approach life. But in reality, they are still boys only pretending to be men._

_Mathieu doesn't want to blame cycling for smothering out their love. It seems so trivial to do that. The competition between them was, is, and always will be intense, and yes, when Wout starts beating him, Mathieu is upset about it, not because he has been defeated but because the person defeating him is the person he loves. He wishes it were anyone else. Why, he thinks over and over again, does it have to be Wout?_

_Wout, for his part, knows that he is the underdog in each race and he is stubborn because, while Mathieu can lose a few races and still have a long and storied career, (he was born into this sport, after all) for Wout, every win is a triumph, every race feels like life or death. He tries to communicate this to Mathieu, who then accuses him of saying that Mathieu's only successful because he's Adrie's son. This fight plays out many times, and neither of them is ever able to understand the perspective of the other._

_It does not help that their rivalry is perfect._

_Mathieu and Wout are made for each other, put on this earth to chase and be chased to the very ends of it. Mathieu is masterfully crafted to balance out and complete Wout and Wout is masterfully crafted to submit to Mathieu's strengths and expose his weaknesses. They know, even at their young age, that they live in tandem, are linked irrevocably, and that, deep down, they need each other; that without the other, they are lesser athletes, lesser people._

_Their bond is permanent and existential. It is a curse, it is a blessing, it is what it is. Sometimes Wout wishes Mathieu had never been born. Sometimes Mathieu wishes Wout would have flunked out of cycling and ended up a pig farmer. Both regret wishing these things. Both know that without the other, neither would be able to squeeze everything out of themselves time after time after time like they do. Theirs is a relationship that both creates and destroys, destructive like a hurricane and resilient like its survivors. It is breathtaking, it is literary, it is terrible. It is not conducive to love._

_Mathieu knows it's over for a long time. He knows it's over the second Wout forgets to bring a note to the first race of the 2014 season._

_"Sorry," Wout says, "I forgot."_

_"It's fine," Mathieu murmurs, but as he says it, he thinks to himself,_ How could you possibly forget?

* * *

_From that moment, Mathieu anticipates it. He attempts to grieve prematurely, to separate himself from Wout, but he can't do it. Every time he tries, he ends up driving to Herentals and they end up in the backseat of Adrie's station wagon, and eventually, it feels like they're doing this just to do it - out of sheer inertia - even though Mathieu loves Wout dearly. His love is amplified and made more desperate by fear. In the final months, when they have sex, Mathieu wants to cry, because he knows the end is coming, because any time could be the last time, because he looks in Wout's eyes and sees distraction and thinks,_ You're inside of me right now. I am giving myself to you, and you do not want to take me. 

_Wout loves Mathieu, too. However, he does his best to compartmentalize his love when they are racing and when they are not together. He can feel Mathieu slipping away, but what can he do? There's no way he can make things the way they were, no way he can walk back on this life they've chosen, no way he can sacrifice his future for the sake of his present. If anyone should be making sacrifices, it's Mathieu, who was born into a glamorous life, walked right into success like it was an open door to an Antwerp coffeehouse. Wout, on the other hand, has no margin of error, and even though Mathieu does, they compete and treat the competition as though they're equals in life, in origin. Wout doesn't want Mathieu to throw races just to spare his twisted feelings of envy and inadequacy, but he does wish Mathieu would acknowledge the magnitude of Wout's achievements relative to their circumstances. This resentment festers and is never resolved._

_If Mathieu's impulse is to obsess over and fear the loss, Wout's impulse is to numb himself to it. It was never going to work out, he thinks. At first, the thought brings him agony, anger at the cruelty of the world, desperate hope that things would turn out otherwise, but over time, he sees it as a way to escape blame. It's not my fault we didn't make it, he convinces himself; it was inevitable. The option to be open about their relationship was never on the table. Locked into secrecy, unable to talk to other people, unable to love and feel and be seen in any kind of public way, things between them simply wither away. At some point, a point neither can link to any specific event in time, they stop saying they love one another._

* * *

_After Mathieu beats Wout at the World Championships in Tabor, Wout texts him to ask if he'd like to take a walk, tells him the address of his hotel. Mathieu's blood runs cold. In that instance, he knows._

_He showers, gets dressed and meets Wout in the lobby, taking every possible second to steel himself for an impact he's sure will eviscerate him. He couches the pain in bitterness, buries it deep. As soon as they're alone in the night air, Wout turns to Mathieu, nervous but determined._

_"Mathieu?"_

_Numb. "Yeah."_

_"Look," Wout sighs, trying to put on a facade of reasonableness and decorum. "These last four years have been incredible. Like, really great, you know, but -"_

_"Spare me the bullshit," Mathieu snaps. "I already know what you're going to say. I knew when I got the text."_

_Wout looks visibly thankful that he won't have to do the hard work of putting the words out there in the night silence, where they'd be swallowed up by the air as a snippet of time, an event. He gazes down at his shoes._

_"Sorry," he says._

_Mathieu doesn't argue, he doesn't protest, and this disappoints Wout, who, in some ways, hoped he would. Like a last gasp before death._

_"Whatever," Mathieu mutters. "I'm going home."_

_Wout says nothing. He does not ask to stay friends, doesn't recount the old times, doesn't change his mind. He has been relieved of his life's largest burden, and in comparison to bearing it, the memories, the sadness, seem small._

* * *

_The next day, Mathieu drives to Herentals, stopping first at a hardware store and then, on impulse, by a liquor store. He buys a pickaxe at one and a half-fifth of vodka at the other, carries both in a canvas bag. The January air is cold and wet with the anticipation of snow. A milky sky looms low and gray and ragged, and Mathieu finds himself thankful it's not lovely outside. He parks the car in the gravel lot at the foot of the trail. No one else is there._

_This is the moment in which he allows himself to grieve, intensely and all at once._

_His footsteps are heavy in the silent woods, the cawing of a crow his only companion. He thinks about it. He thinks about it all, thinks about the early races, thinks about the time he got lost not too far from here, thinks about the fight and the kiss that came after and the video games and the sleeping in the same bed and the creek and the water and the little folded up notes and the first times and how earth-shattering they seemed and he wonders as hot tears roll down his cheeks how it all fell apart like a slow motion avalanche, no, like dying of cancer, withering away until there's nothing left but the memories of something that existed warm and alive and part of a world forever changed by its absence._

_Falling in love, he thinks, was so easy. It took no time at all. They burned through it like a box of matches and then spent a whole lot of time trying to get charred wood and flint to spark again. When did it die? he wonders. Who killed it? How did they become so distant? He blames it on the road racing that ate up the rest of their summers, their special time together. He blames it on not having a way to build a life with Wout after they graduated from school. He blames it on cowardice and on society and on cyclocross and on everything but himself. For a second, he regrets all of it, but only for a second. He understands, even though he's drunk and despondent and alone in the woods sitting by a tree with their initials carved into it trying to find the strength to cut it down, that what occurred between him and Wout was wonderful. What he shared with Wout is something that few people ever truly experience in their long, boring, sad lives. And it is over, and now that it is over, Mathieu is left to wonder whether he will ever be able to recreate those feelings elsewhere, with someone else._

_He can still hear the gentle words, still feel Wout's gaze and the breeze and the warmth of the sun, still hear the twittering of starlings ._

The tree is young. It grows with us.

What us? _Mathieu thinks as he swings the axe the first time, and when he sees wood splinter and chip, every cell in his body tells him to stop, but he keeps swinging, eyes blurry, heaving breath making small clouds in the air, and when the tree finally gives way to gravity, Mathieu tells himself that this act is meaningful, that it will give him closure. In reality, he regrets having taken out his wrath on another living thing. He sits there and cries about that too, cries like he's never cried before or since, cries until his body is exhausted from it, his face wet and covered in snot, his lungs sore from their seizing wheezes, his eyes itchy and red from the salty tears. Mathieu stays there on the forest floor as long as the cold is bearable, and when it is no longer, he returns to his car and stares out into nothing, waiting to get sober._

* * *

_Wout handles the separation a different way. He picks up the phone and calls Roger's daughter. He asks how she's doing. She's doing alright. For a month, Wout tricks himself into believing he's already grieved and moved on. He feels quite chipper, actually - manic, even - as though the world is his for the taking and as a young adult he can do whatever he wishes with it without consequence. He entombs the pain so swiftly, buries it so deep, seals it so effectively, that getting on with normal life is startlingly easy._

_By the start of summer, he and Sarah are in bed together. She tells him she's loved him all this time. He tells her the same, forces himself to believe it, and their relationship flourishes with a relaxed tenderness because, in the end, all Wout wants is to be taken care of and loved unconditionally, thus freeing up his passion and anxiety for other things. Soon, he can't imagine a life without her and as the years pass, he starts to think of his time with Mathieu as a simple quirk of a confused adolescence. His repression is essential to how he's been able to get along in the world, essential to the image he's built of himself as a family man, a good, red-blooded Belgian boy._

_Only when he becomes burdened by the existential nature of birth and fatherhood, does Wout force himself to reckon with those long summers in Herentals._

* * *

Wout stares at Mathieu from across the kitchen table. He realizes that the way he's handled the end of their relationship has exposed him to weakness; that, because he has not processed it, the dredged up memories are raw and all-consuming. It is as though it all happened yesterday, as though the time separating then from now has suddenly disappeared. Almost five years after that night in Tabor, Wout feels his heart break into pieces.

 _I discarded this person,_ he thinks, and his thoughts cascade like a burst dam, rushing over him in an endless, punishing, inescapable monologue. _I shoved him out of my life in the name of convenience, saw him as an enemy to excuse my own callousness. I forgot that I had loved him once. I forgot that he had loved me, too. I forgot who he was, convinced myself that the Mathieu I knew back then had died and was replaced with a stranger, a man who looks more and more like his father every day. But this, the person sitting in front of me right now, is that same Mathieu - was always Mathieu, had only ever been Mathieu. Mathieu never went away. No, of course he didn't._ _It was me. I was the one who had changed._

The advanced hour of the night makes their unplanned companionship seem even more transgressive than it was before.

Wout looks at his watch. It is eleven-thirty.

"It's late," Mathieu says, noting the gesture.

"It is."

The hiss of the radiators and the crumpled shifting of the freezer's ice-maker fill the silence.

Wout strokes Mathieu's hand with his thumb. 


	19. the finish line

"So, that's it."

It's a period tacked onto the end of this hours long, run-on sentence of a conversation.

Mathieu sighs. "Yeah. That's it."

Wout doesn't know how to put into words the collage of different emotions he's feeling, from guilt to grief to catharsis to a long-misplaced and barely familiar affection. He's not sure if such a thing is even possible.

"I'm sorry, you know. That it ended like that."

Mathieu shrugs, but he grips Wout's hand even tighter.

"Though, I guess," Wout continues, "It was inevitable.

Another sigh, this time shakier. "No, I don't think so."

This surprises Wout. He looks up at Mathieu with some alarm. A shake of the head, a hard stare. Mathieu's voice is quiet.

"In the end, we were just cowards."

It stings to hear him say it straight like that, cuts Wout to the quick, and even though he argues, deep down, he knows it's true.

"We were kids, Mathieu. There's no right way we could have handled that."

"Yeah, sure," Mathieu counters. "I used to think that all the time, too. That there was nothing we could do, you know? But now I wonder, what would have actually happened if we chose to not keep it a secret? Like, now I wonder, what if we did that and, like, _nothing_ happened? What if we imagined the whole thing, all the super scary consequences, our lives falling apart?"

"What do you mean?" Wout frowns. He does not like this new, speculative turn.

"Like, my father loves me," Mathieu explains. "I know he loves me, I see it on his face every time I cross a finish line, doesn't matter if I win or not. My mother loves me, too. I'm sure your parents love you just the same. In the end, like, after all the shock and surprise wore off, they would have loved us even if they knew about our whole thing, you know? Like, if other people couldn't handle us being like that, that's on them, that's on a society that's fucked up, that's not our fault. We could have braved that shit together, but we didn't. We didn't even think about it. We locked that door before it could even be opened."

 _A foregone conclusion,_ Mathieu thinks numbly, a _self-fulfilling prophesy._

"Okay," Wout protests, anxiety welling in his chest. "But what's the point? What's the point of thinking like that? Shit's already happened."

An impulse strikes Mathieu. Out of the blue, and totally ignoring the question, he asks: "Can I show you something?"

Caught off-guard, Wout defaults to decades of passively-absorbed social skills. "Sure," he answers, albeit with apprehension.

After so many hours, their hands separate, and each feels acutely the absence of the other's warmth. Mathieu rises from his seat, leads Wout through the hallway, up the stairs and into Mathieu's bike room, which is sparse and clinical like the rest of the house, the rainbow jersey framed for posterity on one of the walls its only decorative adornment. Wout swallows air. His whole body screams at him to get out of there, tells him, go home to your wife and your house and walk away from this forever, like you promised, but instead he stands there dumbly, his face pale, watching over Mathieu's shoulder as he unlocks a safe situated in the far corner of the room, a stray kettle bell placed carelessly on top of it. When Mathieu opens the safe door, Wout expects to see stacks of gold bars or euros or even a gun, but instead there is only Adrie's old Rolex, some important-looking documents, and a cigar box. Wout cocks an eyebrow.

"You want to smoke cigars?"

Mathieu rolls his eyes and hands Wout the box. Wout, not knowing what else to do, opens it. Inside is every note Wout ever wrote Mathieu, a handful of photos of them together after races, and a small journal.

"That's mine," Mathieu clarifies. "After that first summer, when we went back to school, I spent, like, three days wring everything down."

Wout nods. He can't speak. He takes the book out, unable to look at the letters.

"You can sit down," Mathieu offers, gesturing towards the faux-leather armchair Roxane bought when the pandemic started so she could watch him race online. Wout does not want to admit that he is weak, but his tense shoulders and knitted eyebrows give it away regardless. He takes Mathieu up on his offer and sits. After a long, shaky breath, Wout opens the journal up to the first page.

_I'm in love. I can't tell anyone about it because it's a secret._

Mathieu is no great writer, and his handwriting is atrocious, but by the time Wout finishes the journal, his thumb and index finger pinch the bridge of his nose and his breath is shaky and shallow, and finally, for the first time since they separated in Tabor five years ago, Wout does something he has never done for Mathieu. He cries.

It's the silent, repressed kind of crying indicative of someone not often reduced to tears. Startled, Mathieu takes the journal from Wout's hand, puts it back in the box, which he sets on top of the safe, nudging the kettle bell to the side. He's not sure what he should do. In fact, Mathieu does not expect this at all. He did not show Wout the box with the intention of making him cry. Instead, he thought they'd be on the floor in stitches having a good laugh about how dumb they looked as kids and the journal's overwrought, insipid prose - a moment of levity after their long, heavy conversation.

"You okay?" Mathieu asks. What else can he say?

Wout shakes his head, no.

Mathieu lets him cry, and when Wout cries, Mathieu is reminded of the back of the car after Koksidje, when, naked save for the rainbow bands, Wout seemed inconsolable, overwhelmed with emotion as he processed the feeling of knowing someone in the way he knew Mathieu that evening. When he thinks about that, Mathieu wants to cry too, but he manages to swallow it down in the form of a lump at the back of his throat. After a few labored minutes, Wout regains control, wipes his face on his hands, takes a few deep breaths and stands up.

"Sorry. I need to go," he says, his eyes averted, a hardened expression on his face.

In that moment, every part of Mathieu viciously, viscerally, does not want Wout to leave.

"Wout."

Wout stops. Slowly, he raises his gaze from the floor, and when it meets Mathieu's, he gets the distinct feeling that Mathieu can peer right through him, to the core of him, and he to the core of Mathieu, and he knows instantly that there is no one else on earth who looks him that way, no one else on earth who can, through the simple connection of eyes, see everything, all of him.

"Stay."

"I can't," Wout tells him, expression pained. "You know that. This is already way too out of hand."

"You're the one who opened that door." Mathieu's replies, low and quiet. "You knew the risks when you offered to drive me to Kapellen. This was always one of many outcomes."

Wout scowls. "What do you mean, 'this'?"

The stare intensifies.

"That I would look at you and you would look at me and all our shit would fall apart just like it's doing right now and you know it."

After all this time, after all the distance they've put between themselves, Wout's shocked that Mathieu can still read him as well as he does. Trapped under that unbreakable gaze, he's unable to speak, unable to defend himself. He stands there, frozen, caught in the embarrassing act of feeling things.

"I'm going to go take a piss," Mathieu's voice is stern and deliberate. "And in the time I'm gone, you've got a choice to make. You can either call Sarah and tell her you got all tied up after the race and are too tired to drive home, or you can walk right out that door, get into your little car, drive back to your perfect little house and go to bed with your perfect little wife and forget this ever happened."

Mathieu lingers in the doorway for a moment, gives Wout one last, long, soul-crushing look before he turns and disappears down the hall. When he returns a few minutes later, Wout is sitting in the armchair staring blankly at the black screen of his phone. It shakes with the rest of his trembling palms.


	20. grit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol i can't believe i finished this before 'debt' what the fuck

Outside, a light snow begins to fall, splattering white flakes against the room's only window. In the quiet, both men can hear the sound of their own heartbeats.

Mathieu peers down at Wout and Wout peers up at Mathieu, who, saying nothing, takes Wout's phone from him and rests it on top of the safe, as though to remove the temptation of retreating from what they've set in motion.

Mathieu's face splits into an unexpected grin, the crow's feet teasing at the corners of his eyes accentuated by the bright light. 

"You look like shit," he laughs. Wout can't fight the smile twinging at the edge of his lips.

"Look who's talking."

"Filthy," Mathieu cheers, "The both of us."

Wout stands up, fights the nervousness welling up in his chest. "I've been sitting in race grit for, like, six hours now," he complains. "Can't I at least take a shower?"

Mathieu takes a few steps to stand closer to Wout, so close Wout can feel the heat radiating from his body. The lighthearted mood is sucked back out of the room in an instant. Mathieu looks at Wout with probing, vulnerable eyes, and Wout can't keep the weakness out of his own gaze.

"I like you like this," Mathieu says quietly. "This is who we are, you know?"

In that moment, Wout's been taken out of time, physics has jumbled everything up in some kind of freak warp speed accident, and the last five years seem to him like some kind of fever dream during which his body grew into a man and life went on without him. When he looks at Mathieu all covered in dirt, a miracle occurs; everything is reversed, and under that stare, Wout becomes a shy, eager boy with unruly hair and a funny accent again. Wout van Aert from Herentals.

Hands still shaking, a sure giveaway of his heightened nerves, he reaches up to touch Mathieu's face, brushing away dried flecks of mud with his thumb. Wout gazes at Mathieu, really studies him, studies the high cheekbones, the piercing blue eyes, the elegant nose, the thin, pursed lips which part slightly for him now, and when the breath leaves his lungs in jagged stutters, he feels as though he's carrying something delicate and heavy and is deathly afraid of dropping it. 

"You look so much like Adrie," he whispers, eyelids lowered. Mathieu lets out a shaky sigh, leans into the touch.

"You look exactly the same."

Closer they come, locked into their own world where there are no consequences and nothing matters except for this, and when Wout's lips brush gently against his own, Mathieu wants to collapse like a rag doll, all want and no structural integrity. Both are so overcome with emotion, it throbs in their heads and swallows their pulses. The kiss is soft and slow and reverent, as is the time surrounding them, the minutes stretched out to their fullest, most luxurious extent. They pull back, each tasting the vestiges of spent earth, and in the gaze that follows, they search for truth, for understanding, wander around in circles before coming to the exact same conclusion, which is that their lives are inextricable, and that they were fools to think that any attempt at severance would hold forever.

"We're terrible people," Wout murmurs. Mathieu gives him a sympathetic smile.

"No, we're good people. Everything else is just unfair."

Wout kisses him deeply, sinks into the familiarity of it, picks up right where he left off all those years ago, and in the depths of Belgian winter, the summer returns to them and warms their hands and lips and the cavities of their chests where their hearts have been replaced with raucous drumbeats. _Where have you been, Matje?_ Wout thinks, dirt on his tongue as Mathieu's mouth welcomes it inside. _Where have you been for so long?_

Mathieu leads Wout wordlessly into the guest room, afraid the entire time that Wout's going to come to his senses and run away at the last second, but when he opens the door, the smell of stale linen filling the air, Wout is still with him, following him inside, closing the door behind him, turning on the lamp atop the nightstand before taking him into his arms and kissing him with the lips Mathieu still dreams about from time to time. Black zipper sliding down, parting filth-covered dandelion jersey. Mud-splattered rainbow bands fractured and slinked down pale arms. _We are so much older_ , they both think, and suddenly the shakes are back. Wout cups Mathieu's face in his hands, looks at him with awe and longing, kisses him in that breathless way, barely a touch, shivering at the sensation of _almost_.

"What if I've forgotten how to do this?" Wout breathes.

Mathieu smiles against Wout's lips, trails his own close to Wout's ear and whispers, coyly, resisting the urge to laugh at his own joke, "Some say it's like riding a bicycle. You never really forget."

The dam holding Wout back breaks open and he seizes Mathieu, covers his mouth with his own, runs his fingers through Mathieu's hair, wants to cry out _come here, come here,_ and Mathieu grips Wout as tight as he can for fear of losing him, for fear of waking up from this dream he didn't even know he wanted so badly. Straps of bib tights fall down arms spared from dirt by Lycra, the kicking off of cleats, they undress each other without looking, their faces buried in one another as they topple onto the fresh sheets and make an instant mess of them, but who cares, who cares about anything other than this?

They are at once the same and different, their bodies larger and more powerful, with spots from the sun appearing in new places, but they still fit together perfectly. When Wout slides inside of Mathieu, he feels as though he's been lost at sea, starving and wasting away for all these years and has finally, finally come home, and the joy that spreads throughout him seeps into the way he drapes his body over Mathieu's, the way he kisses him through the stretch, the way his fingertips brush away the tears of exertion that turn grit into mud. Mathieu is consumed, enveloped, drowning. Empty for so long and now so full again, he thinks to himself over and over, _onl_ _y for you, Wout, only for you._

"Please, please, please, please, please," he whispers, fingernails digging half-moons into Wout's back. He feels like he's about to die and become something else entirely. Mathieu looks at Wout and Wout looks at him. _Wout, Wout, please;_ they watch each other unravel, _oh my god, Mathieu, oh my god._ Slick sweat and soft hands and the sound of skin against skin, each choking on words as the pleasure smothers them out and turns them into nothing but deep moans and stuttering shivers until there's nothing left but heaving chests and the wash of glorious afterglow.

Wout lies in Mathieu's arms and listens to his heartbeat slow. He realizes that none of this is new to them. They have kept secrets before, and they will keep this one, and he can't find it in himself to be morally outraged about what he's just done. This is a part of him, like his big toe or the skinsuit he wears when he rides time trials. There will be no rationalizing it tomorrow when he has to drive back to Herentals, but he refuses to let life ruin the moment now. In Mathieu's arms, he's brimming with joy, so happy to know that Mathieu, the boy he once loved, is still here in the body of the man holding him. He realizes how much he's missed that boy.

* * *

"Wout?"

"Mm?"

"This is going to sound stupid, but -"

"I don't care if it sounds stupid," Wout interjects. Mathieu's voice grows small and vulnerable. 

"I always, in the back of my mind, had the idea that, like, once we retired, or, I guess once your kid grows up now, that we'd come back to each other. We'd live our lives out as bike racers, and then, when nobody cared about us anymore, we could slip away somewhere, figure it out, grow old."

Wout can feel his heart breaking all over again. He wants to believe that this lovely plan will come to fruition, that they can shake off the burdens of their lives and all the other people in them and go spend the rest of their days in quiet companionship in some unnamed, beautiful place. Put out to pasture, as they say about horses.

"We can't promise each other anything, Mathieu," he sighs.

"No," Mathieu concedes. "We can't. But I wanted to tell you that. I've thought about it for a long time."

Wout feels the need to exchange an equivalent statement, to show Mathieu that he too thinks about things between them. 

"Sometimes I get this stupid notion that if you weren't born, somehow, I wouldn't be born either."

Mathieu finds this very profound.

"I don't know why, but that makes sense to me, too," he comments. "Like, the world can't exist with just one of us in it."

"A black hole will open up and swallow everything up," Wout jokes.

"Sure, why not," Mathieu laughs, and Wout laughs with him, leans up and kisses him. 

"Isn't it about time you tell me that we can't do this again?" Mathieu teases, the words buzzing against Wout's lips.

"Mathieu, I don't want to think about that right now," Wout protests. "I don't want to think about jack fucking shit."

"Good," Mathieu says, "Because right now I'm sixteen again and stupid and drunk on creek water and jerking off."

"Don't say that. You're much better looking these days," Wout smirks.

They sink into the familiar pattern of banter, luxuriate in it, for both know that once the light goes out and unconsciousness claims them, that this will all be over again, that Mathieu will wake up to an empty bed, and their lives will go on as though tonight never even happened, a fitful dream cherished by restless sleepers. It has to be that way. Life is blessed by few beacons of bliss around which we anchor the rest of it, all the drudgery and misery and bullshit that fills countless days on our calendars. The realities of the world are cruel and craven, and so often, good souls labor under them until their time for laboring comes to an end, and then, maybe then, can they catch a glimpse of the warm sunshine that reminds them of the times when they were young and beautiful and full of limitless potential.

Wout suffers the absence of Mathieu out of decorum and a sense of obligation to institutions far older than the ones he and Mathieu are beholden to, and Mathieu suffers the absence of Wout because he believes, deep down in his gut, that the absence will be temporary, if long and arduous. Both survive only because they know that, no matter what claims other people hold on their lives, none will ever be as strong as the ties that bind them permanently and irrevocably.

At three in the morning, Wout reaches up and, with great reluctance, turns off the light. As Mathieu lets the sleep take hold of him, his mind grasps desperately onto the last of his fleeting thoughts.

_I was made for you, Wout, and you for me, and as long as there is mud and dirt and grit on this earth, I will tear it all asunder just to follow you to the ends of it._

_And back again._


End file.
